November 2007: White House, Black Hole

NASA art, from "Top Ten Strangest Things in the Universe"—

Beyond a black hole's gravitational border -- or event horizon -- neither matter nor light can escape.

Source of inspiration for the Cheney-Rove White House?

The question suggests itself, but the one Dan Froomkin asks is, "Where Are the E-Mails?"

The e-mails in question date from March 2003 to October 2005 -- a crucial period that includes the Iraq invasion, a presidential election and Hurricane Katrina.

White House officials have known for more than two years that the messages were deleted -- a clear violation of presidential records-preservation statutes. But the president's aides won't explain what happened, what sort of backups they have and what they're doing about it.

That obstinacy led a federal judge to step in yesterday and order the White House to preserve every bit of related data in its possession -- just to make sure nothing untoward happens while a civil suit by two open-government groups goes forward.

The suits are by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and National Security Archive lawyers.

Farther down in his column, Froomkin helpfully points out that this all came to light due to "Scandal Convergence"—after CIA leak special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald notified Libby's lawyer, that "we have learned that not all e-mail of the Office of Vice President and the Executive Office of the President for certain time periods in 2003 was preserved through the normal archiving process on the White House computer system."

Froomkin also wants us to be clear that these are "Not the Same E-Mails"—

...there are two entirely different sets of missing e-mails: These and the ones that top White House aides including Karl Rove intentionally sent and received using their Republican National Committee e-mail accounts even while knowing full well that circumventing the White House servers for official business was a violation of federal law.

When congressional investigators looking into the suspicious firings of nine U.S. attorneys last year started asking after those e-mails, it turned out those were missing, too, just for different reasons: They'd been deleted by the RNC. The White House is ostensibly trying to recover those as well.

"Ostensibly" being a correct if polite word, which is to be expected from the accurate, polite Dan Froomkin. But knowing who is "trying to recover" the e-mails, the results will be predictable.

I have to admit that, when an unsolicited publication from Pakistan arrived at the Department Oval Office, I thought the envelope had a rather ironic stamp in its Supreme Court commemorative proclaiming "Justice for All."

That was last year. For much of this year, Pakistani lawyers have taken to the streets, protesting the government's attack on the judiciary, with removal of the chief justice. A struggle that continues–with Musharraf moving this month to suspend the Constitution, over 2500 lawyers in detention, and the chief justice remaining under house arrest.

As to own variety of rulers who answer to no one, Talking Points Memo offers "Bush Admin: What You Don't Know Can't Hurt Us, 2007 Version."