David Cay Johnston, a hero for our time

David Cay Johnston is a reporter for the Columbian Journalism Review who insisted that White House communications personnel speak on the record. Bravo! Well done!

The practice of anonymous sources survives only because editors and reporters permit it to survive.

It also survives because our profession is foolish enough to think that we can manipulate it in our favor. Our clients will never be on the receiving end of smears and rumor mongering. Oh no. Certainly not. Perish the thought.

It is a evil practice, let us put an end to it.

Great moments in rank hypocrisy

Bush Looks to His (Secret) Legacy

George W. Bush, who has expanded his power to access the e-mails and other electronic communications of Americans, is resisting congressional demands that White House e-mails be saved for later research by historians.

They doth protest too much

PRSA Sounds Off on CBS Commentary: Analyst Says McClellan Lied Because He's in PR, Where 'Misinformation' is the Guiding Standard

CBS News legal analyst Andrew Cohen took some ugly shots at the PR profession with his commentary on "CBS Sunday Morning" this weekend about Scott McClellan's new book: "There is nothing funny about this past week's revelations that former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan lied to the American people about certain vital policy decisions within the Bush Administration… But in every tragic drama comes a moment of comedic Zen. And in L'Affair McClellan, that has come from the public relations community, where some now wonder whether the former flack violated the 'ethics' of his craft. Apparently, an industry the very essence of which is to try to convince people that a turkey is really an eagle has a rule that condemns lying."

He continues: "The Public Relations Society of America states: 'We adhere to the highest standards of accuracy and truth in advancing the interests of those we represent…' This clause strikes me as if the Burglars Association of America had as its creed 'Thou Shalt Not Steal.' Show me a PR person who is 'accurate' and 'truthful,' and I'll show you a PR person who is unemployed.

"The reason companies or governments hire oodles of PR people is because PR people are trained to be slickly untruthful or half–truthful. Misinformation and disinformation are the coin of the realm, and it has nothing to do with being a Democrat or a Republican," Cohen asserted.

PRSA chairman and CEO Jeffrey Julin fired back at Cohen and CBS in a letter this week, claiming Cohen unfairly challenged the integrity of the industry.

So what was PRSA saying in 2003, when it might have made a difference?

Victoria Clarke Named 'PR Professional of the Year' By PRSA; Former Department of Defense Spokesperson to Speak At Society's Int'l Conference.

The Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) has named former Department of Defense spokesperson and current CNN political analyst Victoria Clarke as the Society's 2003 "PR Professional of the Year." Clarke will receive the award on Monday, October 27 at the Society's 2003 International Conference in New Orleans.

PRSA's Public Relations Professional of the Year Award honors the very best public relations work for...

I want to ask Jeffrey Julin and the entire executive board if they are proud of the award the gave to Clarke for her role in deceiving our country into war. This is one of the reasons I let my membership in PRSA lapse. We should have called Clarke out on her lies, not rewarded them.

The fact is that our industry played a hideous role in the events that led up to the disastrous Iraq war and we have yet to come to grips with it.

Calling all Windows IT Pros: what would you do about the White House email?

Windows IT Pro has an excellent overview of the controversy surrounding the White House email system, filled with links for those who have only just joined the story. They conclude the article with an appeal to their readers:

At Windows IT Pro, we publish articles and information about products regularly for systems administrators concerned about staying compliant with a myriad of laws concerning email retention. Exchange administrators: What are your thoughts on the White House's archiving process? Do you have any advice for how they could do better? We want to hear from you!

I will be interested to see what they get. I am not persuaded that we are dealing with a technical problem, but I look forward to reading about the technical solutions.

Edit -
CatabBlog has some thoughts about the case.

Preserving Government Records

Panel would reform records storage

“Too often over the past several years, our investigations have revealed weaknesses in government preservation of e-mail that could leave substantial gaps as future historians examine White House and agency decision-making,” said Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), the committee's chairman and one of the bill’s sponsors, in announcing the legislation.

In a related development, preliminary findings from the Government Accountability Office released today summarized a survey of recordkeeping processes at four agencies. Although the agencies generally met NARA's statutory requirements, its policies were not always followed, GAO auditors said.

“The loss of documents and information through indifference should be viewed with as much alarm as their loss through a system breach,” said Patrice McDermott, director of OpenTheGovernment.org, in her opening statement for a hearing set for today by a subcommittee that deals with federal information policies and issues. After a series of votes delayed lawmakers, the session was postponed indefinitely.

Little progress has been made in electronic records management across the federal government, McDermott said, and “we repeatedly have to relearn the lesson, apparently, that servers and backup tapes are not appropriate records management systems.”

It is unclear whether we need to relearn that lesson or whether the Bush White House chose not to learn that lesson.

White House email follies

The White House email controversy: hearings spotlight disturbing IT practices

Some of that technical detail, though, confirmed my worst fears: IT operations at the White House are terrible. The archiving system currently in use is a bad joke. In a big PR problem for IBM Lotus, Congress is also badly miscategorizing Lotus Notes as an obsolete technology, providing a misleading justification for an unfounded migration during a time of war. The cost to manage data recovery is being misrepresented by at least an order of magnitude. And Congress behaves like an old married couple, constantly bickering. That last, at least, is no surprise to anyone.

Like Gilligan's ill-fated three hour tour, this three hour hearing ended badly, with no real resolution. A good hour of the hearing was wasted on a debate between the members about whether an "Interrogatory" of one Steven McDevitt was acceptable to the members.

McDevitt, it turns out, is one of us. He was the IT guy in the White House Office of the Chief Information Officer who was responsible for setting up the new archiving system -- and he was pissed. Apparently, all of his best practices recommendations were ignored.

If the White House PR plan is to stone wall this and hope everyone loses interest, then they are going about it the right way. But I don't think this will work. I think that we are going to be hearing much more about this.

Via Pensieri di un lunatico minore.

Email retention in the era of accountability

E-mail Scandal Drives Storage Lesson Home

As the saga of whether the Bush administration properly saved or illegally deleted e-mail continues to unfold, experts are advising companies to review and confirm that corporate e-mail policies are not only in place but are meeting regulatory requirements.

"It's one thing to back up and archive e-mail, but it's a whole other thing to make sure it's there and you're able to retrieve it," said Matt Smith, president of LiveOffice, a provider of message managing and archiving services.

These investigations will continue and it is only a question of time before government contractors are drawn in.

Huh?

White House discloses details of e-mail backup system

Although the White House has backup media from October 2003 onward, officials said that, "consistent with industry best practices," they recycled the backup tapes used from March to October 2003, a period that included the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Since when is recycling backup tapes consistent with best practices?

Edit -
Waxman: Chart showed White House missing e-mails

The details of the Bush administration’s e-recordkeeping system and e-mail backup contingency plans became clearer this week when Theresa Payton, chief information officer in the Executive Office of the President’s Office of Administration, submitted an affidavit Jan. 15 to a federal court with details about the information contained on the White House’s backup tapes. The revelation came in response to a court order in the now consolidated lawsuit against the Bush administration.

Her declaration states that although the White House has backup media from October 2003 onward, the White House recycled the backup tapes used from March to October 2003, a period that included the United States’ invasion of Iraq. According to Waxman’s letter, one of the days for which the White House has no e-mail archived for the Office of the Vice President – Sept. 12, 2003 -- came while backup tapes were being recycled.

Edit ii -
The very indiscreet Tony Fratto.

Edit iii -
Cheney emails missing from day leak probe started.

Edit iv -
I keep wondering: have they checked that man-sized safe in Cheney’s office? Maybe he kept some copies there

Judge upholds Presidential Records Act

Government Declines to Appeal Ruling Opening Up Presidential Records

This week, the Bush administration decided not to appeal a federal district court judge’s decision that invalidated a crucial section of Executive Order (EO) 13233, which broadened the rights of presidents and former-presidents to withhold federal records from the public for indefinite periods of time.

On October 1, Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly gave historians and researchers a partial, but significant victory in a lawsuit questioning the legality of the Executive Order. The judge struck down the section of the EO that allows a former president to indefinitely delay the release of their records.

The records management systems developed to comply with federal requirements drive the rest of the industry.

It's a great time to be in e-Discovery!

Watchdog: White House Lost A Lot More Than 5 Million E-mails

The chief counsel for a private watchdog group which recently scored a legal victory over the Bush administration on its improper records archiving said that the number of e-mails missing from the White House archives was far greater than previously reported.

White House e-discovery blues

Court orders White House to preserve e-mail backups

The complaint alleges that since 2003 the Bush administration has illegally discarded about 5 million e-mail messages that it was required to keep under records laws. The plaintiffs are demanding that the missing messages be restored using the backup media files and that the administration implement a new “adequate electronic management system.”

The groups’ lawsuits against the Executive Office of the President, the White House’s Office of Administration, and the National Archives and Records Administration have now been consolidated.

Bush & Co. maybe counting on a friendly judiciary to bail them out. Private corporations would be ill advised to make the same assumption. I am not sure it will work in Bush's case.

White house email and the Presidential Records Act

Where have all the e-mails gone?

Waxman's staff report notes that the Presidential Records Act requires the president to ensure that all "activities, deliberations, decisions, and policies that reflect the performance of his constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties are adequately documented ... and maintained as presidential records" and charges that White House officials used their RNC e-mail accounts "in a manner that circumvented these requirements."

Using email accounts on the Republican National Committee server to conduct official government business could be judged as a evasion of the Presidential Records Act.

Hunt the slipper, email edition

United States House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform

There are several next steps that should be pursued in the investigation into the use of RNC e-mail accounts by White House officials. First, the records of federal agencies should be examined to assess whether they may contain some of the White House e-mails that have been destroyed by the RNC. The Committee has already written to 25 federal agencies to inquire about the e-mail records they may have retained from White House officials who used RNC and Bush Cheney ’04 e-mail accounts. Preliminary responses from the agencies indicate that they may have preserved official communications that were destroyed by the RNC.

Imagine yourself the Chief Information Officer for a federal agency and you are presented with a inquiry from the Oversight and Government Reform Committee for any email you may have originating from the Republican National Committee. How would you know? Where would you look? This is a great content management story.

e-discovery, evidence recovery, and content management lollapalooza

Interim Report on RNC Emails and the Presidential Records Act

There has been extensive destruction of the e-mails of White House officials by the RNC. Of the 88 White House officials who received RNC e-mail accounts, the RNC has preserved no e-mails for 51 officials. In a deposition, Susan Ralston, Mr. Rove’s former executive assistant, testified that many of the White House officials for whom the RNC has no e-mail records were regular users of their RNC e-mail accounts. Although the RNC has preserved no e-mail records for Ken Mehlman, the former Director of Political Affairs, Ms. Ralston testified that Mr. Mehlman used his account “frequently, daily.” In addition, there are major gaps in the e-mail records of the 37 White House officials for whom the RNC did preserve e-mails. The RNC has preserved only 130 e-mails sent to Mr. Rove during President Bush’s first term and no e-mails sent by Mr. Rove prior to November 2003. For many other White House officials, the RNC has no e-mails from before the fall of 2006.

Obviously there will be several investigations coming out of this. Those investigators will have to sift through mountains of evidence, employ advanced technology to recover other evidence, and generally search for needles concealed in fields of haystacks. Presto Vivace does not currently represent clients who officer that sort of service, but this is a great time to tell those stories.

When email gets misdirected

Greg Palast

I have Karl Rove’s emails. No kidding. He and his team aren’t the sharpest knives in the drawer. They sent copies of their plans to GeorgeWBush.ORG instead of GeorgeWBush.COM addresses — and, heh heh, they ended up in my in-box.

It's moments like this that make me wish I was a reporter on the records management or litigation support beat. Hee hee hee.

Attorney General Gonzales congressional melt down

Potomac Flacks has a good analysis. My favorite part:

When the emails comes out, so will the truth - Once you have to start handing over emails, there is blood in the water.

I also like this comment at Slashdot:

Take the US attorney firing. I'm not a lawyer, but even I know enough never to tell an easily refuted lie when you can get by with a uselessly vague truth. I'd have been saying things like "It was time for new blood." or "David Iglesias did a fine job, but a shakeup will keep everybody on their toes, and Larry Gomez deserves his chance to show us what he can do."

Edit-
Very funny analysis form Colin McEnroe:

Some answers are so bad as to resist analysis. If I ask you what 9 times 7 is and you say "rhubarb," I'm no longer in a position to correct your math.

White House RNC email records management shuffle

I have created a series of del.icio.us tags to track the White House email story.

It’s a great day for evidence recovery

Dan Froomkin, Washington Post:

Countless e-mails to and from many key White House staffers have been deleted -- lost to history and placed out of reach of congressional subpoenas -- due to a brazen violation of internal White House policy that was allowed to continue for more than six years, the White House acknowledged yesterday.

I wouldn’t bet on that. Oliver North thought he had deleted all those emails. He discovered otherwise.

Congressional investigations are going to be very good to the evidence recovery industry. Presto Vivace does not currently have any evidence recovery clients, we wish we did. There are going to be a lot of terrific stories to be told.

Of course the key to attracting and retaining clients in this line of work is keeping your mouth shut. But without talking about your clients there is much that can be said about the science of recovery. This is a moment for journalists who report on litigation support, evidence recovery, and records management to come into their own.