The White House E-Mail Cover-up

It was common practice for nearly all politicians to destroy their most important documents

In 1972, upon the death of J. Edgar Hoover, countless thousands of official and unofficial FBI records were destroyed.

It had been common practice for high ranking politicians to destroy their most important business documents ever since politicians started their lies, cover-ups and conspiracies. In other words, ever since our Founding Fathers put together our government.

To end this, Congress passed the Presidential Recordings and Materials Preservation Act in 1974, placing the presidential records of Richard Nixon in federal custody to prevent their destruction.

The Act was meant to not only reduce cover-ups at the highest levels of government, but to also give our historians the materials they need to keep accurate records of our past. In 1978 Congress expanded this protection of historical records with the Presidential Records Act. This was accomplished by mandating that all records of former presidents automatically become the property of the federal government upon leaving the Oval Office.

When George W. Bush took office in January, 2001, the presidential papers of Ronald Reagan and Vice President George Bush were due to be made public. In spirit against the Presidential Records Act, George W. Bush first delayed the release for 90 days, then repeated the action, putting off the date until September, 2001. Then, on November 1, 2001, Bush issued Executive Order 13233, limiting public access to the records of former U.S. presidents. This Bush executive order also included the documents of former vice presidents.

Although this was passed hush-hush, never making headlies, those who knew about this action were outraged, claiming that it violated both the “spirit and letter of existing US laws.” The order severely limited public access to presidential records and delayed obtaining materials from presidential libraries.

On January 21, 2009, during his first day in office, President Barack Obama revoked Executive Order 13233. Obama rightfully restored the original Executive Order 12667.

During his presidency, George W. Bush was accused of acting in violation of the Presidential Records Act of 1978. In 2007, the Bush White House e-mail controversy was revealed. The event started when George W. Bush initiated the unprecedented midterm dismissal of seven United States Attorneys, on December 7, 2006.

The U.S. attorneys were replaced with interim appointees, under provisions in the 2005 USA PATRIOT Act reauthorization. Following the action, a congressional request was called looking for documents indicating why the attorneys were fired. This caused the Bush administration to reveal the fact that not all internal White House emails were available, because they were sent via a non-government domain, that was hosted on an e-mail server not controlled by the federal government.

In 2009, the US government finally admitted that as many as 22 million emails may have been deleted by the Bush administration.

Written By: Tom Retterbush

The Lies of George W. Bush, by David Corn 

As Washington editor for the Nation, David Corn has had his eyes and ears open for what he construes as lies from the Bush White House, and here he has assembled what many will see as an impressive body of evidence. Corn states that Bush has "mugged the truth-not merely in honest error, but deliberately, consistently and repeatedly to advance his career and his agenda." Corn carefully documents alleged falsehoods dating back to the campaign trail covering a full range of issues-from Enron to education, global warming to stem cell research. But this is no simplistic anti-Bush rant; it also faults the media for not underlining the apparent lies and the public for not caring enough. - Publishers Weekly
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