White House May Keep Documents in E-Mail Flap Private, Judge Rules

US District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ruled June 16 that the White House does not have to make public internal documents examining the potential disappearance of e-mails sent during some of the Bush administration's biggest controversies. In her opinion, Judge Kollar-Kotelly said that the White House's Office of Administration is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), even though its top officials had complied with the public records law for more than two decades. The Office of Administration, which performs a variety of services for the Executive Office of the President, announced it would no longer comply with the FOIA last August, three months after an independent watchdog group filed a lawsuit seeking to discover what happened to the e-mails, which may have vanished from White House computer archives. Acknowledging that the issue "is a close one, and is not easily resolved," Kollar-Kotelly wrote that the Office of Administration "lacks the type of substantial independent authority" necessary for it to fall under the FOIA. She added that the office performs mostly administrative functions, which also exempts it, and that past compliance with the FOIA was "insufficient by itself" to subject it to the law's requirements. Judge Kollar-Kotelly dismissed the lawsuit.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/16/AR2008061600872.html
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