White House Says It Routinely Overwrote E-Mail Tapes From 2001 to 2003

WHITE HOUSE SAYS IT ROUTINELY OVERWROTE E-MAIL TAPES FROM 2001-2003
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Elizabeth Williamson and Dan Eggen]
E-mail messages sent and received by White House personnel during the first three years of the Bush administration were routinely recorded on tapes that were "recycled," the White House's chief information officer said in a court filing this week. During the period in question, the Bush presidency faced some of its biggest controversies, including the Iraq war, the leak of former CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson's name and the CIA's destruction of interrogation videotapes. White House spokesman Tony Fratto said he has no reason to believe any e-mails were deliberately destroyed. From 2001 to October 2003, the White House's practice was to use the same backup tape each day to copy new as well as old e-mails, he said, making it possible that some of those e-mails could still be recovered even from a tape that was repeatedly overwritten. Two federal statutes require presidential communications, including e-mails involving senior White House aides, to be preserved for the nation's historical record, and some historians responded to the court disclosure yesterday by urging that the White House's actions be thoroughly probed. "There certainly could have been hugely important materials there . . . and of course they're not owned by President Bush or anybody in the administration, they're owned by the public," said presidential historian and author Robert Dallek.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/16/AR2008011602202.html
(requires registration)

* White House overwrote e-mail tapes
http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20080117/a_capcol17.art.htm

* White House recycled backup tapes of e-mails (Associated Press)
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-na-email17jan17,1,2386042.story?coll=la-news-a_section