Crappy Record-Keeping: A Feature, Not a Bug

Catalog of records the Bush Administration kept in such disorganized fashion that no one could reconstruct WTF BushCo had been doing on that subject:

• Gitmo detainee records
• Torture tapes
• Finance records from the NRCC for 2002-2006 
• Database of US citizens surveilled under CIFA
• Emails pertaining to Medicare Part D passage
• Records showing oil companies cheated the federal government out of royalties for drilling on federal land
• Emails from the period when Dick Cheney and Scooter Libby were planning their Plame cover-up
• The talking point document Scooter Libby used to leak Valerie Wilson’s identity to Judy Miller on July 8, 2003
• Almost all the emails (stored on RNC servers) documenting illlegal politicization of government
• Karl Rove’s collected works

(What am I missing?)

You see, historically, authoritarians usually happen to be superb record-keepers. That has been their undoing, once historians got to them. One thing the Bush fuckers got right (from their perspective, mind you) was to avoid leaving usable records.