White House Ordered to Find Missing Emails

Judge issues last-minute bid to archive Iraq letters
By Ambreen Ali,  Newser Staff
Posted Jan 14, 2009 2:29 PM CST
White House Ordered to Find Missing Emails
The White House says the court order is unnecessary, since staff is already looking for those e-mails.   (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

As current White House employees pack their bags, a federal judge today ordered the president's executive office to find and properly archive missing e-mails written by senior Bush appointees. At issue are communications that date to the period between 2003 and 2005, specifically documents that relate to the invasion of Iraq and the "outing" of CIA agent Valerie Plame, reports the Washington Post.

A new system rolled out early in the Bush administration abandoned automatic archiving and allowed any of 3,000 White House employees to delete messages. In 2005, an internal report found e-mails missing. "We have made great progress in the accounting of e-mail messages and will comply with the law," a White House spokesman said today.
(More George W. Bush stories.)

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