Crewsing For A Bruising: The NSA Responds To EOP
Three days ago, Saturday March 22, we discussed the hard driving charge being mounted in DC District Court by the National Security Archive and CREW in relation to the destroyed missing White House emails. In that post and discussion we dissected the Administration (EOP) brief in objection to the Order To Show Cause determination, and the affidavit of Theresa Payton filed in support thereof; and man did did you guys bring the analysis and tech savvy to the show. What kind of host would I be if I were to deny you the latest developments in the case? A couple of hours ago I received another communique from Melanie Fuchs, the attorney for the NSA. Without further adieu, and as Paul Harvey would say, and, now, for the rest of the story.
In light of your continuing interest in the White House e-mail case, I am sending you the National Security Archive’s reply in response to the Executive Office of the President’s filing last Friday. That filing, which was made in response to Magistrate Judge Facciola’s show cause order, opposed forensic copying of the EOP workstations. The Archive’s response, which includes the declaration of Al Lakhani, Managing Director at Alvarez & Marsal Dispute Analysis and Forensic Services LLC, describes the significant risk that the emergency recovery backups tapes maintained by the EOP are not adequate for recovery of the missing White House e-mails from 2003-2005. Further, the response notes the lack of any support for the EOP’s assertion that forensic copying would be costly and burdensome, provides actual estimates of the cost of forensic copying, and points out several steps EOP could take to protect sources of missing e-mails including preserv ing external storage media (external hard drives, CDs, DVDs, paper copies, etc).
Here is the NSA Reply Pleading Re: OSC. Here is the Affidavit of Al Lakhani, the CREW/NSA expert witness. I think you all will like these documents a little better than the corresponding set filed by the Administration. I want to get this post up, so I will engage in further analysis along with you in the comments.
Just finished reading the NS Archive reply to the EOP’s last whine and it says most of what we were saying the other day which was: “Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit!”
Wonder when the Judge is gonna rule on this?
“Bullshit” I really like it when you brilliant folks speak in layman’s terms.
The NSA uses a very pointy stick, when it feels like poking stuff.
I hope the WH gets it.
What? You think a bunch of stiff lawyers got anything on you guys? Not a chance! (Pssst! Don’t go getting a big head or anything, but I think you might well have contributed to their effort on the NSA Reply. I have talked to Fuchs, and corresponded as well, going back a couple of months; they are more than aware of the work here. I wasn’t kidding on the last thread when I said how important the work done here is, and what an impact on the critical pressure points of the process it causes).
Oops, @3 was replying to MadDog.
I’m glad to hear that the NS Archive folks pay some attention to this fine blog!
I hope that CREW reads here too. They gave a H/T to MojoBlog on destroying the hard drives. but I’m not sure that CREW has grabbed all the other stuff that has been written here that helps their case.
Does this mean that you folks are doing their work for them?
I like the way the question of the disposition of the “retired” workstations was framed, “put on a shelf”. The NSA allows for the possibility that the old workstation equipment may have been stored rather than shipped to a handler that scrubs the disks clean.
My guess is that the government buys this stuff rather than leases it. They have a budget and they spend it on a contract. If so, old workstations are govt property and not leasing company property. If so, what kind of time and energy do you think they’re willing to put into finding a way to extend the useful life of the old equipment? Yep, that’s what I think too. Zero time and energy. The only question is whether they got their shit together enough to get the disks scrubbed.
I also think Payton’s two-prong argument: we replace the equipment 1/3 per year and we don’t know when equipment was replaced, was an effort to convince the judge that no workstations are left from the 2002-2005 time period without having to show documentary evidence supporting it.
I think Payton’s response naturally leads the NSA down the path that needs following next. What is the disposition of the retired workstations?
What investigative resource does the NSA have available to it?
Here is a synopsis of the top to bottom of the NSA staff. As a direct on campus adjunct of George Washington University, the NSA also has a ready source of motivated student interns; here is a description of the intern program. Far as I know, that is about it. They are strictly non-profit, take no government funding of any type, and operate on a pretty small budget described on their history/about page at their website:
Can you imagine an IT admin at Amazon, or Wells Fargo, or Nieman Marcus, ExxonMobil, Shell, Texaco, MorganStanley, making this statement:
“…and we don’t know when equipment was replace…”
Or saying, ‘we don’t know where the machines/drives are?‘ Or saying, ‘We’re not sure that we have backups for recent years‘?!
This is loony tunes.
My local **school district** has to account for every single computer, down to the serial numbers, OSs, upgrade dates, and every single software program on every machine — and that’s just the tracking required for the software and hardware.
Just imagine the public hysteria if one single child sent or received an email that couldn’t be traced. If this were a K-12 school district, and anyone even raised a HINT that one or two missing emails might involve pedophilia, ‘heads would roll’. And if this were Amazon, or another business in which a transaction was at risk because there were no backup records, ‘heads would roll’. Given those normal facts of life in America today, the WH claims of ‘expense’ and ‘inability to recover’ emails are simply not credible.
It’s become clear that the WH doesn’t respect the US public, nor do they respect the MSM. But I had some hopes they would still fear/respect the courts.
Apparently, they don’t.
So basically, the WH is telling a federal judge that the kind of backups that schools and businesses do every day is ‘too expensive’ or ‘too difficult’ for the WH…?
Unbelievable.
It’s too much to hope that the judge grasps the significance of the insult the WH is dishing out here.
I should know better after watching this WH for years, but it’s still stunning to me that they would hand out an insult of this magnitude to a federal judge.
Call me a naive fool, but it simply takes my breath away.
BTW: the link to the CREW doc showed up blank for me (using Safari).
Which link? Was it one of mine?
Apologies. I thought the NSA link was not working; it is, it just took longer than I’d expected. Will catch it up later today, as the preview looks really good. (Hey, anytime MadDogs can distill a doc to bs, bs, bs, I gotta have a look ;-))
LOL!
My excuse was that it was bedtime, but after further contemplation, I stand by my review. *g*
Yeah, and I found this so compelling I’m taking a morning break just to see what all you smarties figured out in the last 12 hours ;-0
Interesting article on the private sector datamining effort under way through such programs/companies as Phorm.
I can almost hear NSL-writers chomping at the bit.
A good read about
f the court actually enforces the order, something has got to come up… unless a lot of hardware “accidentally” melted. (Did anyone report the smell of burning electronics in the VP office suite fire?)
However, I am still doubtful the court could rely on the WH or a WH-led contractor to do imaging or recovery. The court needs to supervise the personnel and the process — it would be easy to corrupt.
Agree that there ought to be a court specified monitor provision of some sort.
loved straightforwardness of this quote from the NSA’s reply you posted:
and…
Anyway, IMO their entire statement is appropriate and accurate. I do wonder though why there’s no mention of recovering IMG backups which Payton mentioned to congress… ///???
I don’t know if there’s such a legal avenue, but what immediately comes to mind for me is…
a) court ordered removal of Payton from her job: she’s repeatedly… both in this thing and congressional testimony, just plain made stuff up. She’s lied. And from her own words, I see no evidence of intention to execute what she has promised… eg: recovery of “lost” WH email.
b) assign court appointed professionals to get the job done in her stead. (this affadavit says as much on pg. 10 re: forensic copies)
There were several lawmakers who, after listening to her testimony a few weeks ago, asked if she was “slow walking” the recovery process. Seems clear to me that she indeed is… if not then utterly obstructing the process, and NSA’s statement bolsters the claim.
I watched 2nd half of Frontline’s Iraq thingie tonight (watched 1st one last night), and I must say they did a very, very good job. I’m familiar w/most everything in the show, however they put it together in a way that gave me an overall sense of scope… the magnitude of this disaster, the juvenile (at best) management, and the lies.
It’s depressing, frankly: amateur hour running the world like schoolyard bullies, vast destruction, and getting away with it all scott-free.
I mention this because I suspect there’s probably a whole lot more than email which future generations are going to want to see/know about as an account & record of this presidency. And I suspect most of the most incriminating stuff is going the same way as these emails while nobody’s looking.
It makes my stomach weird knowing that this Payton episode is only a tiny part of a much larger whole, though representative of that whole. I’m really having trouble at this moment grasping just how massively things have gone wrong here.
Our second half of the broadcast is tonight. My husband and son appreciated the manner in which Frontline has brought everything together. Although, I felt as though I was simply listening to all of Marcy’s blog and book brought together in a show.
I’ve posted here many times, I would enjoy Macy et al produces an in-depth news show…
Great post bmaz. I cannot add to the tech stuff. But I agree with ROT, “Can you imagine an IT at…”
Nope.
See bmaz, the Judge can say, “Nope!” right back at the White House.
The audacity…
I’ve posted here many times, I would enjoy it if Marcy et al produced an in-depth news show…
Proof reader is my friend. Need coffee…
I watched the Frontline program on the website last night. I have to insert a silly observation. Look at the website and under the page with the program selection there are two logos for the program underwriters. I just glanced at them quickly and had to laugh:
MacArthur. Park.
Yummy.
Love these words: “without a shred of factual support”
Tne Bushies have shredded the Constitution, the DOJ, Global warming
initiatives, the economy, and our soldiers…
Sad, utterly sad…
When I heard about the bloody desktops being replaced on a rotating basis this past week, I could only swear a blue streak. WTF, do they really think we’re that f*cking stupid or what???
Why is their asset management process more up-to-date than their backup processes, if they are claiming they upgrade desktops on a rotating basis? Which further begs the questions:
– where’s the asset management policy?
– who’s the vendor(s) that performed the replacements?
– what’s the process for migrating data from old to new assets?
– what’s the decommissioning process for the old assets?
– who’s the vendor(s) responsible for final decommissioning and destruction?
– where’s the traceability documentation that shows which assets were swapped in for which assets swapped out?
– where are the contracts for any outsourced work?
What a crock of crap; it’s as if they genuinely believe that nobody out here does asset management, let alone data management or archiving. I’m with jdmckay, Payton needs to be removed immediately as she has indicated she is actively violating the Presidential Records Act, let alone obstructing investigation(s) OR she is grossly incompetent, or both. (I vote both.) But unfortunately we’ll see another Lurita “Cookies” Doan, likely without any acknowledgment of wrongdoing.
Ugh…this all suggests that shadow groups like ADCS and MZM were likely involved if there’s no document trail at all.
Rayne, I have something to add to your list:
– Where’s the emails?
Because an entity that uses great equipment as it is supposed to be used, and always rotates it out every three years to insure everything is “the best and doesn’t fail” ought to have the product of what that equipment does. Computers are designed to store information like, you know, email. If everything thing was so very marvelous with their ultra best practices; where the fuck is the email? This needs to be put in zero sum terms for these asswipes, i.e. you can’ claim how great you are if you can’t produce the email.
Can’t the judge throw the book at ‘em.
Looks to me to be a “deliberative” attempt at fuckery…
It would be great if the JUdge tells the expert to “go forth and analyze”
Then, he’ll see that the White House is lying their brains out…
I would think it would logically follow that if you are going to swap out 1/3 of your computers every year, you’d have a list of computers to grab.
Or does the OA pretend that they just randomly swap out 1//3 of their computers per year, and hope that the one you swapped out on Tuesday is not the one you again swapped out on Wednesday?
Not even a 6 year old would believe that process.
It then follows that the OA had a list of WH users/computers to swap out every year, so the Judge ought to be asking: “Where’s the list?”
It is also SOP at every government organization that I’ve ever dealt with that they always have Asset tags affixed to each computer and its peripherals.
The government always employs a semi-tech squirrel or two whose only job is to put Asset tags on computer stuff and log the Asset tag in some database/list.
There is simply no way that the OA didn’t have a list of WH users/computers to swap out, and further, that they didn’t have an Asset inventory list of what computers stuff was assigned/located with which person.
Therefore, the WH OA is either deliberately being unresponsive, just plain lying, or probably both.
Ever hear of a quality management tool called “The Five Whys”?
In theory, to get to a problem’s root cause, one ask “why?” five times.
Why do we not have the emails?
– Because the backup process failed.
Why did the backup process fail?
– Because…and this is what Payton failed to answer, substituting a snowstorm of bullshit instead of the real answer.
But then we whip out “The Five Whys” on any bullshit she offers instead:
Why do we not have the emails?
– Because the PC’s were partially decommissioned.
Why do we not have the decommissioned PC’s?
– Because…and Payton fails again to offer a legitimate answer to this question, too, only another snowstorm of bullshit.
We can never get to the third why in the process because PAYTON provides the wrong answer.
If we remove Payton from the equation and begin “The Five Whys” over again, will we get to the third, fourth and fifth answer, the root cause and the real reason why we don’t have the emails?
The question, “Where’s the emails?” has always been on the list, bmaz; the answers have changed to protect the guilty.
There’s also a certain point where PAYTON is the answer to the question, “Where’s the emails?” If she doesn’t want to be THE ANSWER, she’d better provide the real one. I think we’re at a point where Congress should consider holding her in contempt; it shouldn’t take a third attempt at “The Five Whys” to get to the next real answer.
Yeah, JohnLopresti pointed out (I think at #51) on an earlier thread that the answers keep changing — and it’s very effective at running out the clock.
But that’s also why, IMHO, the EOP has pushed this judge into a corner. FWIW, at this point it’s almost baffling that the WH is either stupid enough, arrogant enough, or scared enough to be this insulting to a federal judge. Yeowsa… (ick!!!)
“Cookies” Doan… ROTFLMAO…
What does holding someone from the Bush administration in “contempt” do? Nothing as long as Mukasey is around.
IANAL, so take this with a grain of salt…perhaps even the entire salt shaker.
When a Federal Judge finds someone in contempt, the DOJ has no role to play in the enforcement of the contempt charge.
Simply put, when the Judge says “you’re in contempt”, he/she gets the court bailiff to haul the offending butt directly to the slammer.
And in this case, I’d pay for a ticket to watch the Judge throw the key away on Chief Idiot Officer Theresa Payton.
So it should have been the Judge who determined that they were in contempt to implement the enforcement of the charges. Is that right?
Not with respect to Miers and Bolton because that was an issue of “Congressional” contempt.
In the case of Chief Idiot Officer Theresa Payton, that is clearly in jurisdiction of the Federal Judge hearing the case.
So would Mukasey be in charge of enforcing “Congressional contempt” charges?
The US Attorney for the District of Columbia’s office would be in charge of presenting the case for civil contempt to a judge. The current USA for DC is Jeffrey Taylor and he works, of course, for the Attorney General Mukasey. And it is Mukasey who has stated that Justice will not handle the contempt citations.
I’m not sure about this. If the Judge orders someone to do something and they don’t, there is no prosecution. You just go to jail, and when you comply, you get out. So, if the divorce judge orders you to pay child support and you just refuse, you go to jail until you pay. In the same way, if Payton is held in contempt for refusing to respond to the Court’s order, she goes to jail until she fixes things up.
As I read through the “NSA Reply” am I getting the gist? That it is too expensive to follow the constitution and supply the material for our congress to implement congressional oversight of the executive branch? Am I close?
Or cry. They’ll never have that recipe again.
Lakhani’s affidavit (para. 12) says that .pst files are covered by an ANSI standard that limits their size to 1.937 gigabytes. The government affidavit says that there were 5000 files with an average size of 2 gigs. Lakhani concludes that some e-mails might have been lost. Is it possible to draw a stronger conclusion?
He describes three forensic methods of getting data. Two do not capture “unallocated space”. I thought the point of the forensic methods was to look at the unallocated space to see if there was something useful. Is that right?
masaccio,
Lakhani’s declaration (which is all other respects most excellent) is a little unclear about the .pst files at that point. The text format in older .pst files (pre-Outlook 2003) is not Unicode, but what we used to call ASCII, but is properly called ANSI. Microsoft doesn’t support those older .pst files when they get larger than 2GB, but I have several that are larger than that. The biggest problems are the potential for corruption if you open them with Outlook and searching for specific emails can randomly fail.
Because the .pst files in question were created from a server-side process, this is not likely to be a big problem. Lakhani is correct to raise it as a potential issue.
1.9gb limit existed only through Exchange 2k: Exchange ‘03/’07 and later upped it to (from memory) system limit of UNICODE (UTF 16/32 on MS OS systems) text files which is in the TB range. The ansi limit is not on PST files, rather a limit imposed by non UNICODE (eg: ISO 8859) text files on MS file systems. In outlook, unicode PST size limits are set in the registry (eg: operating system database that track various settings on a given computer).
Further, should a given *PST file be updated to exceed 1.9 gb limit on pre ‘03 Exchange, recovery of data “lost” from the size limit is not necessarily unrecoverable… it would depend on available space on HD, file system in use, and HD technology.
I think Lakthani is incorrect about PST being ANSI standard (not positive), I’m pretty sure it’s unique to MS.
As stated by others, when will courts start calling bullshit? Servers have software that details the health of not only individual hard drives but power supplies as well. The techies will be warned when a drive in approaching failure and pull it before failure The hard drives and power supplies are often hot swappable, meaning you don’t have to shut down the individual server, just pull and replace as needed.
Who would have known that many individuals in the Bush administration are truly concerned about the environment. Although it appears to be a problem when the only thing they recycle are critical back up tapes.
I can understand how the Congress could hold Payton in contempt, but is there a path where the judge could throw her in jail until the emails are produced?
Yeah. Good point, Sorta like Judy… Jail time until you produce the goods (anonymous sources, leaks, and e-grams)
It’s not just e-mails. It’s interrogation recordings and God knows what else. To me it appears to be a systematic drive to destoy all incrminating data. They obviously don’t want this information falling into the hands of a incoming Dem administration. I’m willing to bet that the contents of Cheney’s man sized safe spontanously combusts sometime in December.
I have this memory. There was a point in the Plame affair where Karl Rove supposedly had turned over emails, and then Fitzgerald apparently found out about a warehouse somewhere (again my memory) that held one of his old harddrives and that it was from this that emails were extracted that forced Rove to backtrack and revise his testimony. Now A) is this memory substantially correct or just the product of my own fevered imagination and B) how would this impact on the current controversy?
I also remember this.
http://rawstory.com/news/2005/….._1012.html
http://www.rawstory.com/news/2….._0327.html
No use looking in my memory ’cause it’s been wiped. *g*
Seriously, we may have to wait until EW’s return to answer your question. I don’t know of anyone else who retains so much in an super-orderly fashion and is able to produce it at a moment’s notice.
This is one of those examples that tempts me to scan her entire Anatomy of Deceit into a text file that’s searchable.
Tempting. But faster to wait for EW to pull it out of her holographic memory.
F*CK. That’s three bits right there that are pushing my blood pressure sky high this morning, after reading the Hard Drives to Hell thread and this thread, still working on the links.
– Missed Payton’s use of the word “likely” here:
WTF does “likely” mean – are the key machines still in use or not?? And why the hell can’t Payton simply give a yes-or-no answer here — either she’s incompetent and should be forced out or worked around, or she’s the problem, and I’d pay good money for somebody to ask her under oath WTF she thinks she is (incompetent or deliberate obstruction).
– Note Lakhani’s declaration, pointing out the lack of envelope-level journaling – I know I’ve asked before over the last two-plus years why we don’t see emails in doc dumps to distlists, and emails to bcc’s. All that these assholes would have had to do is email a blind distlist and bingo, all the email is lost, save for the sender’s, and that can be lost or hidden in several ways.
– The 2GB threshhold could easily be manipulated by simply sending somebody some photos. (In 2002 I had a couple terabytes of servers at a Fortune 100 company’s research site that were overloading weekly because field researchers were constantly sending photos from laptops to servers for personal archives; when I investigated why they were sending the photos and chewing up bandwidth with syncing, it was in part because the photos were being swapped between researchers for opinions by email, and trashing their email folders. One researcher sending photos could foul up an entire departments’ email boxes.)
jdmckay (35) — you might want to look into that ANSI standard. Keep in mind all the maneuvering that MSFT has been doing with trying to make its Office Open XML the ISO and Ecma standards versus the open source industry’s own ODF standard; they’ve spent a LOT of money on this in order to save contracts with governments and mega-corporations. I wouldn’t be surprised at all to find that the ANSI standard looks a lot like MSFT products.
could you clarify please?… not sure what you’re getting at.
The increased capacity of Exchange ‘03 & later I’m certain of. The limitation of pre ‘03 sizes is as I said… a limitation on *.txt size. Whether *.PST is a standard, as I said I’m not sure (I did quick search through RFC register and it didn’t show up). Regardless, as w/many other file types, PSTs are just an internal format super-imposed on *.txt spec. The distinction is somewhat academic, but adds specificity. And in discussing any of this stuff in context of Payton’s statements, bottom line precise specificity matters IMO.
It also occurs to me, re: outside forensic contractors: both national labs (Livermore & Los Alamos) have plenty of folks who already have security clearances (eg. working on nuke stuff) and experience/expertise which would make job Payton’s bs’ing her way though child’s play. They are designing/writing very, very low level embedded OS(s) & executables regularly, and know this “stuff” inside out. I know a bunch of ‘em, and they are top notch.
“Gigabytes, recapture, external storage device, asset tracing systems,write block copying, forensic coyping, thumb drives, meta data”
Al Lakhani’s explanation of the ability to retrieve these e-mails is clear enough for even a luddite like me to understand.
“An asset tracing system, which is often used by many organizations to keep track of their assets, can be used for the identification and recovery of hard drives that are warehoused as a result of the termination of the employee. Industry best practices often include labeling, warehoused work stations and or hard drives with a barcode label to facilitate the tracking of the asset”
Spend the money. That is unless congress wants to support the Bush administration getting away with extremely serious crimes. Like Treason
The asset labels are also a nicety, not absolutely necessary.
Most equipment already has a manufacturer’s barcode with the serial number on it, can be readily scanned by standard barcode readers like the Palm Pilot-based Symbol-brand systems I used to use in asset management.
If you have a laptop, just pick it up and look underneath.
And if you have a desktop, turn it around and look at the back. I’ve never seen one without a manufacturer’s serial number barcode.
OA can’t track stuff my rear end…phooey!
The logic is inescapable; the White House does not want to be tracked, documented, held responsible, caught with their mitts on the goods, etc.
The logic is also inescapable that this was a deliberate decision on the part of this Administration, and occurred even before they took office.
They may not have had a plan for Iraq, but they sure and hell had a plan to “hide the ball”.
There are far, far too many instances of nefarious obfuscation throughout the entire Administration from the WH all the way to the EPA to be mere coincidence, therefore the only conclusion left is that this is by design.
Tis not a bug, but a feature.
Nonetheless, there HAS to be some form of accounting so that, as another poster above indicated, the IT clowns don’t “changeout” the same computer more than once. One way or another, there IS an database or file that has been used to track the changeouts AND their disposition (particularly if Cheney wants to make certain that THOSE harddrives are wiped).
Yup, every CPU, every monitor has a manufacturer’s barcode with serial number. And in an organization with 6,000 users, I only ran into a problem with duplications a couple times in several years. The asset tags add a layer of complexity and cost, but they can make it easier to do spot audits of equipment since the tags can be placed in a more accessible location on equipment than in the back (where it’s often on the floor or against a wall). I ran into folks switching tags on equipment a few times, but it didn’t take long to sort out what happened.
Not only does every laptop, desktop, monitor have a manufacturer’s barcode serial number — so does every hard drive in every server.
You can run, but you can’t hide.
They also have a pretty solid MAC address to go with it.
The Bush administration thugs seem pretty damn successful at hiding the goods.
Leen, if I might politely beg to differ — the things they are not able to hide, they destroy. Like hard drives.
All the more reason to realize that djmckay’s analysis that if the judge (and, by extension, the entire US court and legal system) doesn’t want to be played for a fool, a coward, and a shill, that judge would have to ’suck it up’ and be courageous enough to order court appointed techies in to go through the EOP, the OVP, and all related offices.
I think djmckay is dead on target here — basically, the WH is behaving so insultingly that they’ve backed this judge into a corner. For the judge to do anything LESS than order court-oversight techies into the EOP is to become accessory to a crime.
If this were the Mafia, or a bank, or a business, or school district, the courts would have to intervene.
Why would the WH be so insulting, UNLESS they think they’ve got this judge in their pocket? (And yes, I’m honestly asking — have no time to go find out about the judge in this case, so I don’t have any background on who has to make this decision.)
Differ all the way..I am a proud peasant and know I am dipping my toes into the territory of some big brains here. Not afraid to have my questions reduced to dust.
Turned to dust? Heavens!
Your curiosity and willingness to ‘cut through the bullshit’ and ask the right questions in clear language is a gift to all who come here, IMHO!
Humbled. Headed back to the fields to plant spring garden. Thanks for being patient with my questions.
Well, I don’t know that they’ve been successful at actually hiding stuff, as much as they have been successful at the shell game.
They’ve kept us playing at this so long that we’re unable to get to the goods, corrupting more and more of the players as they go along so that it gets more difficult to put hands on evidence. While Lakhani says in his declaration, for example, that based on Payton’s comments he thinks the emails are gone, nobody’s actually done a physical audit to make that assessment. We’re relying on Payton’s word, which we can all agree is worthless hot air and spittle.
For all we really know, the emails are still there; they could still be hidden in a number of ways, and until we actually get our hands on the premises and the equipment, we cannot assume they are completely gone.
And yet another question comes to mind: Where’s the IT audits performed for/by EOP OA?
Spend the money! Get the Goods!
Put me down as another who doesn’t think it’s the actual hiding they’ve succeeded at. This is Poe, “The Purloined Letter” — hiding in plain view.
What they have succeeded at, for reasons I can’t grasp, is in intimidating a lot of people who should be fighting back harder. I don’t know your congresscritturs well enough to presume to judge how hard it is for them to do that, but it is amazing to me, sitting here in the peanut gallery, that they are taking so long.
And every single copy of every single piece of software (if purchased in bulk on contract) has unique identifiers, and every single email has identifiers.
That’s why I find the WH claims so brazen and so shocking.
I’m no security guru by any means, yet even I know that everything is tagged and numbered.
How on earth can the EOP presume to be so flagrantly insulting? (Okay, this is becoming a rhetorical question, but I’m still just agog. Put this set of incidents into any large biz or educational organization, and you see how patently full of sh*t the WH claims are… it’s as if they don’t even have QA on their bullshit at this point.)
Wow.
This is really just blowing my tiny little mind.
This goes waaayyyyyy beyond ‘audacity’, but I can’t think of a word for it yet.
Chutzpah?
BTW, thanks to bmaz and everyone for keeping this topic alive. I just have to hope that we are near the point where pulling on one more string will cause the whole massive BushCo con game to unravel in ways that even the Democratic Leadership will have to say, OK, enough is enough, its time to frog march these perps out of office.
Bob in HI
So many strings have all ready been pulled. What is it going to take? Lies about a bj?
These guys have been planning and running dry runs since Nixon. Iran-Contra was just a dry run. I think it is very important to understand that the only thing that actually works in Iraq is the oil. That is totally deliberate. They didn’t screw up the planning for post war, they expected this and were willing to kill off however many were required. They want to starve the beast of govt spending, drive up the debt to levels where you have to cut things out. Also, during the Great Depression not everyone had a bad time.
“According to one source close to the case, Rove is providing information on deleted emails, erased hard drives and other types of obstruction by staff and other officials in the Vice President’s office. Pentagon sources close to Rove confirmed this account.
None would name the staffers and/or officials whom Rove is providing information about. They did, however, explain that the White House computer system has “real time backup” servers and that while emails were deleted from computers, they were still retrievable from the backup system. By providing the dates and recipient information of the deleted emails, sources say, Rove was able to chart a path for Fitzgerald directly into the office of the Vice President.”
http://www.rawstory.com/news/2….._0327.html
Is it at all possible that Fitzgerald all ready has the hard drives?
Nice find.
The WH IT folks know exactly when (or whether) workstations were replaced. They keep tight (anal) track of workstations in government (my experience is with the Air Force). There are stickers and bar codes and serial numbers logged. When they pull one out of service, they make a note of exactly what serial number/machine when where in replacement.
The only way that all hasn’t happened is if Bush put out a Presidential directive ordering that records and accounting no longer be kept. Unlikely though possible, given the criminality of the current regime.
Avoiding being held accountable for obstruction of justice and treason would make a “Presidential directive ordering that records and accounting no longer be kept” a necessity for this group of thugs.
Ding ding. And if he didn’t he’ll say he was thinking about about it.
They not only have to eliminate/destroy/scrub the computers that sent any given email, but ALL the systems that received the emails (if using pop) and/or the mailserver itself (if using IMAP or webmail). I find it highly dubious that the mailserver backups were so absolutely shoddy as the WH indicates.
Does anyone have a sense of Magistrate Facciola’s integrity? Will he try to protect Bush/Cheney/Rove?
A quick google indicates that Facciola is a lifelong practicing Catholic; Manhattan ADA 1969 -1973; DC private practice 1974 – 1982; U.S. Attorney, DC Office, 1982 – 1997; appointed Magistrate in 1997 (by Clinton?); an expert in electronic discovery; and has already ruled in this (NSA) case that contempt-of-court may be necessary to ensure White House compliance.
http://www.dcd.uscourts.gov/facciola-bio.html
http://www.sedonaconference.or…..cciolaJohn
http://whitehouser.com/policy/…..istration/
o.k. I know I am out of my league by asking you folks questions (but that has never stopped me before). Rove rolled over to Fitzgerald, and even though that “sealed vs sealed” theory by Jason Leopold was discounted could Fitzgerald all ready have the goods on the Bush(Cheney) administration? (Cheney)
http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bi…..i/61/20422
http://forum.truthout.org/blog…..185947/499
“After spending the past month retracing our steps and confirming facts, we’ve come full circle. Our sources continue to maintain that a grand jury has in fact returned an indictment. Our sources said that parts of the indictment were read to Karl Rove and his attorney on Friday, May 12, 2006. Last week, we pointed to a sealed federal indictment, case number “06 cr 128,” which is still sealed and we are still pointing to it. During lengthy conversations with our sources over the past month, they reiterated that the substance of our report on May 13, 2006, was correct, and immediately following our report, Karl Rove’s status in the CIA leak probe changed. In summary, as we press our investigation we find indicators that more of our key facts are correct, not less.
That leaves the most important question: If our sources maintain that a grand jury has returned an indictment – and we have pointed to a criminal case number that we are told corresponds to it – then how is it possible that Patrick Fitzgerald is reported to have said that ‘he does not anticipate seeking charges against Rove at this time?’ That is a very troubling question, and the truth is, we do not yet have a definitive answer. We also continue to be very troubled that no one has seen the reported communication from Fitzgerald to Rove’s attorney Robert Luskin, and more importantly, how so much public judgment could be based on a communication that Luskin will not put on the table. Before we can assess the glaring contradiction between what our sources say and what Luskin says Fitzgerald faxed to him, we need to be able to consider what was faxed – and in its entirety.”
Could the Bush administration be digging their own graves by continuing to refuse to hand over to Fitzgerald what Fitz might all ready have?
And just when is AG Mukasey going to answer the demand from Congress to get their hands on Junya and Deadeye’s non-GJ testimony to Fitz?
Per usual, it seems “run out the clock” is the only plan the Administration has.
Not so fast! “Run out the clock” is also the plan by the Dem Congress. They simply let things move along at less than a snail’s pace because they don’t want to REALLY do what is required.
Actually, it isn’t less than a snail’s pace. What Congress is doing by going along with the “run out the clock” scheme is slow down the process asymptotically. The pace of actually DOING anything gets slower and slower as the elections approach. At the point of the elections, any forward “progress” will be so vanishingly slow as to by indistinguishable from completely stalled. Then the elections happen and viola! It will be “let’s not focus on the past, let’s focus on the future!” And everything Bush/Cheney have done will be allowed to settle into quiet precedent, there for any and all future dictators…err…Presidents to whip out and wield again.
this is depressing
I guess that will come after Mukasey was unwilling to call waterboarding torture and refused to enforce contempt charges.
How can these folks wonder for one second why the American public has little to no confidence in our Congress and a deep dis-respect for the double standards in our so called Justice system?
They only need to examine what has taken place the last seven years.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0803/S00419.htm
IBM, Darrell Issa, and Millions of “Lost” White House Emails
By Jason Leopold
In the far corners of the Internet where people engage in online discussions about computer-related issues and computer-related issues only, Issa’s characterization of Lotus Notes as a Betamax type of technology was the equivalent of blasphemy. Moreover, to suggest that a switch from Lotus Notes to Microsoft Outlook is the reason that the White House cannot locate millions of emails shows a level of incompetence by Payton, the White House’s chief information technology officer, according to several email technology experts.
Shortly after the February 26 committee hearing, several users of Lotus Notes contacted Ed Brill, an executive at IBM who specializes in the Lotus Notes software, concerned that the way Issa and Payton characterized Lotus Notes would be bad for business if they continued using the software.
In a blog http://www.edbrill.com/ebrill/…..ments#anc1 maintained by Brill, the IBM executive wrote that calls from users and “partners” of Lotus Notes became so “dramatic” and created such a terrible public relations problem for the company that he was forced to call Congressman Issa’s office and demand that he amend his testimony about Lotus Notes.
“The sequence of events that followed that was quite dramatic for me, even after 20 years in the industry,” Brill wrote in a March 23 blog post. “I ended up on the phone with [Issa]. I have received a letter from the Congressman, which I hope to publish in the next week or so. The hearing testimony will also receive an amendment clarifying the intent of the commentary about Lotus Notes.”
In a brief interview, Brill said he was not authorized to speak on behalf of IBM, but said he found it “suspicious” that the White House had not recovered “old data” prior to the switch from Lotus Notes to Microsoft Outlook. He added that he could not provide me with a copy of Issa’s letter because it contained confidential information about Lotus Notes software. However, Brill said that Issa agreed to amend his testimony to reflect that “Lotus Notes is a viable product” and that he erred when he characterized it as “wagon-wheel” technology.
Issa’s office did not return emails or phone calls for comment.
Damn, I forgot about Ed Brill!! We would do well to watch him on this (you can bet that MSFT does about everything else IBM). He’s a bit full of himself at times, but he draws out the real techs. Be sure to read all the comments on blog entries about the email mess because the techs will unload there.
There’s an entire sub-industry that capably manages transitions from Lotus Notes to Microsoft or the reverse. It’s not always smooth, but unless it’s managed by Monica Goodling, a transition would not lose the amount of data the White House claims. Its as credible a claim as saying that Shrub is still on the wagon.
Heh. Just had a deliciously malicious thought.
I’m really not in favor of torture per se, but I do think this situation warrants putting Payton in front of the HJC or House Oversight committees, and tormenting her with questions to which she may only answer yes or no at the risk of being found guilty of contempt.
“Did you perform regular audits of IT equipment, Ms. Payton, which we all know to be a best practice across the industry? Yes or no?”
“Did you perform regular audits of software, Ms. Payton, which we all know to be a best practice across the industry? Yes or no?”
“Did you sign off on IT services contracts, Ms. Payton?”
“Did any subordinates sign off on IT services contracts, Ms. Payton?”
“Did you read existing IT process manuals for EOP OA, Ms. Payton, when you joined the organization?”
“Did you order any changes to existing IT process manuals for EOP OA, Ms. Payton, after joining the organization?”
And so on, until she is ready to pop. We could go on for days like this, too, as my fellow IT peeps can testify.
I guess if contempt charges meant anything (Meirs, Bolton) to this administration or to Mukasey, the threat of the enforcement of the law might be enough to get her to tell the truth. Just dreaming.
My youngest daughter (20) and a whole pack of her college friends followed the Plame case for a while here at Marcy’s (after I convinced them to follow along for a bit). They were well aware of how Libby got off. Lots of conversations after that about how our Justice system is not just. It was very discouraging to listen to their thinking and acceptance of how corrupt our Justice system is.
I think the word you’re looking for is ‘criminal’.
Ummmm, yeah. The word ‘criminal’ fits, and has the added benefit of not being so shockingly obscene that I’d offend anyone reading here.
The question still remains: why would the WH behave in such an insulting fashion as to force a showdown? For someone trying to run out the clock, that’s stupid — unless they think they have this wired.
A meticulous brand of oversight such as the careful suggestions in the GWU NRA project reply, and accompanying declaration by the recovery representative from Alvarez + Marsal Dispute Analysis + Forensic Services, LLC., should provide several ways to view data, media, and metadata, once the court definitively decides the scrutiny is worthwhile. It may be an ungainly process, but worth it, for succeeding presidencies, as well. Our blogHosts are kind to provide these timely glimpses into IT in the WhiteHouse and the executive agencies who in aggregate have underreported or missing emails for >700 days in the referenced timeframe.
Froomkin mentioned this post today just in case you wanted to know. Good job bmaz!
Bmaz goes yard… with a Froomkin
This article, which I found on Buzzflash yesterday, indicates that Sen. Kennedy among others, opposed impeaching Nixon because they didn’t want voters to get used to Gerald Ford and elect him in ‘76.
http://www.opednews.com/articl…..lost_j.htm
What are the chances that Nancy and the others who are opposing impeachment this time or even playing hardball (inherent contempt, etc) in the various investigations including those related to the missing e-mails, are doing so for similar reasons? (Personally, I think blackmail from the data mining is just as likely.)
I suppose this would only fit the 2008 circumstances if Cheney is impeached first (imperative) and someone the GOP wants (McCain or other) becomes VP, and then W is impeached, all before the GOP convention, so that the new VP becomes prez and then becomes the GOP nominee.
Do the dems in congress think, under that scenario, the chances of the dem nominee this year are diminished by having either McCain (who might be appointed to replace Cheney) or whoever else replaced Cheney would do better in the election?
To me, that has to be irrelevant. Their duty is to the constitution right now, not to speculate about what happens in 2008 if they impeach. If they don’t impeach, the precedent they set will impact a lot more than one election. I’m really surprised that dems were, behind the scenes, opposing the Nixon impeachment, so I started wondering if their feet-dragging boils down to a ‘74-redux. If so, we need to let them know loud and clear that saving the constitution, at least starting the process of pasting it back together, is the most important thing on their agenda. If they ignore that, the victory in November will be hollow. I think if they start the process and lay it out for the public the way the Watergate hearings did in ‘74, the dems will benefit in November, maybe even with a ‘thank you’ landslide.
Nothing shocks me these days, but–having run home at lunch to watch the Watergate hearings and revel in the brilliance of Barbara Jordon’s speeches–I really had no idea that any dems were opposing the Nixon impeachment.
Was this news to anyone else?
The new VP would have to be approved by Congress. What they can do is to approve only a short-timer who will not run on his own, e.g. Sen. John Warner. I thought McCain might have been offered up if impeachment had happened a year ago, but I don’t think the Democrats would approve a choice like that now.
Bob in HI
Good point about a replacement VP being a ‘placeholder’ with agreement not to run. Which again begs the question about why, with all the multitude of high crimes and misdemeanors, is it still off the damn table.
And skdadl, I agree totally, it’s about getting committee members to ask the right question. We desperately need another “Butterfield moment” or someone with the guts to just lay it all out….that the orders to disappear the e-mails and fire the U.S. attys came from the top. In needs to be out there, in a public hearing….all the stuff that those of of who have been following it figured out a long time ago…..so that maybe just maybe the MSM can’t ignore it. (Yeah, right, they’ve ignored everything else.) Spitzer’s lost his career, so I was rather hoping that he’d come out with a “Harper Valley PTA” smackdown about a few things.
But it’s so troubling that Congress doesn’t want to hear from Sibel Edwards and others who were willing to take the risk of coming forward. All the pieces of this tabletop sized jigsaw puzzle are already there and most sections have been assembled…in large part thanks to .
We need someone who could get the MSM’s attention to publicly assemble all those sections and hold that ugly picture up until everyone gets it. (There’s the energy task force in one corner, FISA in another, the Valerie Plame leak, the US attorney firings…Siegelman..election fraud (we’ll need more corners!), and the war smack in the middle.) After everyone sees it, then that puzzle needs to be made into a tabletop, and if Nancy won’t put impeachment on that table, then we need to know why the hell not.
the magnitude of all this is pretty overwhelming when you consider the concept of propaganda.ie who gets to tell the story. who has the most credibility? How valid is the information? who you gonna believe?who writes the history books and teaches the children? Just look at what the what bushco did to twist the information around to meet his perpespective.
Link to Froomkin.
Comments on Al Lakhani’s Affidavit:
General:
“Back-up tapes” for October 2003 through 2005 were destroyed, per standard industry procedure. That ought to be beside the point. Prior to their destruction, their contents should have been copied and permanently archived, or, depending on legitimate applicable procedures, reviewed by the archivist for what to have been permanently preserved and those items actually preserved.
Item 6
Ms. Payton refers to other, “existing” back-up tapes, which “should” contain the requested material. Her verb tense avoids the statement that such tapes “do” contain the requested data. Where are those “existing” tapes, do they in fact contain the data? Via what process and schedule? If they do, why hasn’t it been produced?
Item 7
The process described is not remotely a Six Sigma process; it is virtually the opposite. Instead of copying the whole contents of the “back-up tapes”, they copied data sets and somehow divorced them from the original log files. It makes matching up original with copied files “difficult”.
Item 8
Back-up data files were accessible by everyone on the EOP system. As we’ve said ad nauseum, that’s giving Al Capone the keys to the liquor warehouse. If that were a random act, it’s comparable to the proverbial monkey coming out of the boys’ locker room having just written Hamlet.
by the way, happy birthday EW,
may your hands always be busy
may your feet always be swift
may you have a strong foundation,
when the winds of changes shift
may your heart always be joyful
may a song always be sung
and may you stay
FOREVER YOUNG!!!
Additional comments on Al Lakhani’s Affidavit:
Item 13
The journaling used by this high-tech savy GOP-run administration doesn’t capture, eg, bcc’s, all names on distribution lists, or recipients “whose e-mails were forwarded”, something Karl Rove apparently routinely does.
Item 18
The hard drives of retired machines are sent to another “government entity” for destruction. Which entity? Lots of people copy e-mails onto their local hard drive so that they can refer to them when they have no system access. That mail could be recoverable.
Items 24 and 25
These discuss forensic imaging and copying, the former being more complete, costly and time-consuming. Given the administration’s complete lack of credibility on this issue, the Archives ought to demand imaging, not copying. The prices vary from $50-1000/device, depending on the work performed. Give the cost to taxpayers of not knowing what this administration has done, the cost seems nominal.
How come Bush hasn’t fired the whole National Security Archive yet?
The Archive’s/CREW fight is over whether the EOP has met its statutory obligations to preserve data (not delivery of the data itself). In response, the EOP failed to offer credible evidence it has met those obligations. In fact, it disclosed facts that suggest its system could not possibly have met them. Its system would have been archaic ten years ago, and it has yet to fix most of the problems it bothered to identify.
It would be reckless for the Archives – or the court – to accept the unsupported assertions of this reckless administration.
it’s all part of the plan man.kinda like throwing a rock in a bucket of shit.don’t get any on you!
Emma has got me thinking about Watergate. Does anyone remember who the figure was who later said something like “No one asked me the right questions”? It wasn’t Butterfield, I don’t think, although definitely it mattered that someone finally asked Butterfield the right questions, and it wasn’t Magruder or Felt, but it was someone else who actually had something to say but wasn’t going to volunteer it until investigators hit the right buttons. Googling is getting me nowhere because I can’t remember the exact line.
Don’t worry… remember that fire at the Veep’s office…
The only thing that will trigger an impeachment or the uncovering of the truth, is a MIRACLE…
skdadl,
I’m not sure if this is what you’re looking for, but I googled and found an interview Paula Zahn did with Magruder in 2003 and if you scroll down about halfway, he’s talking about Nixon ordering the Watergate break in and he says something to the effect that no one asked him if it was ordered from the top during his trial:
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRA…..se.13.html
I love Watergate trivia! I think you are remembering a scene from All the President’s Men, where Hugh Sloan, who was Treasurer of the Committee to Re-elect the President, says through his lawyer on TV that his Grand Jury testimony did not implicate Haldeman, which was contrary to what he told Woodstein and they had put in the paper with Sloan as an anonymous source. Woodward confronts him later with this, and he says he told the truth – he wasn’t asked at the Grand Jury to implicate Haldeman. He was actually one of the few honest people associated with Nixon, and resigned as treasurer when he found out about the Plumbers.
I think not asking the right question also happened with Butterfield. As I remember, he had been questioned by committee staff, but not asked the question of a taping system. Just before he was called to testify before the tv hearing, someone told Doar(?) (not sure which dem) to ask if there was a taping system….which turned the whole inquiry. Dean’s testimony was just hanging out there until knowledge of the taping became known. The bad-mouthing of Dean stopped in that moment as the nation held its collective breath.
That’s right about the Butterfield moment — it felt almost like an accident at the time — Wow! Look what we just fell over! A few people may have been prepared, but I don’t think most were.
All these examples are most instructive. I understand why most public servants don’t want to volunteer much unless they have to, but that makes the law and the oversight so tricky. When things are as bad as they are now (Cheney keen to bomb Iran), I really wish that someone who actually knows what’s goin’ on would step forward and risk everything and talk. Those people are very unusual, though, and it’s a big risk.
PS: John Doar was senior counsel to the HJC, not a committee member.
Yes, I know, I should have been clearer. Sorry…@110 Who was doing the questioning? And yes, Sam Ervin, that little ole country lawyer…ha!
PPS: Butterfield didn’t spill to the HJC — just checked. He was testifying before Sam Ervin’s SJC in 1973. See the wiki.
OT
Fuckhead is heading to a resort at our expense.
Nothing will happen…. except scratching his own ego…
Can we veto it?
http://www.nytimes.com/aponlin…..ref=slogin
That’s it, Ishmael, except I’m sure I remember that from more than just the movie. Thanks for the name. My poor tiny leaky memory needs something concrete to start off from.
Emma, thanks for that, and I knew that Magruder had said something like that, except I also knew I was remembering an innocent person. Magruder was kinda cute (maybe still is), but he was not at all innocent.
I’m not just thinking about this stuff for trivia reasons, either, Ishmael. I’m wondering who might have said more by now if asked the right questions. If I were on any of the crucial oversight committees, I would be thinking about that.
The good lawyers on the committees already know that. One of the first thing I tell clients during a discovery or a trial, don’t volunteer information and listen very carefully to the question that is asked – some of the members on House and Senate committees, I’m thinking Whitehouse and Waxman in particular, know how to ask questions and how to box in a reluctant witness – although there’s not much you can do with the “I don’t remember” types like Gonzales except make them look stupid(er) and have to say it over and over again, and compare the trivial nature of what they are absolutely sure of with the very important stuff that they seem to have conveniently forgotten.
OT-Endeavor is doing it de-orbit burn…
Something bothers me about the firms that were awarded contracts with DOJ for a case tracking system (besides the fact that CACI was one of the firms).
This paragraph in particular, doesn’t quite jibe with other info I’ve seen about the Labat-Anderson company:
Did Lockheed Martin buy Aspen Systems from Labat-Anderson some time during the last several years?
Maybe it’s the echoes of Scooter’s letter to Judy Blew-Lies Miller and the aspens joined at the roots that are nagging me.