Waxman Wants Fielding to Testify on Missing White House E-Mails

Source: Politico

Waxman wants Fielding to testify on missing White House e-mails

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) has invited - the key word here - White House Counsel Fred Fielding to appear before his panel on Feb. 15 to explain whether the White House is missing millions of e-mails, and if so, what happened to them. White House Deputy Press Secretary Tony Fratto said today that there is "absolutely no reason to believe that any e-mails are missing."

But Waxman, in a letter today to Fielding, said Fratto's assertion "is contrary to information that the White House provided to the Committee staff in a briefing on September 19, 2007. At this briefing, the White House showed staff a chart indicating that there were 473 days for which various entities in the Executive Office of the President had no archived e-mails." That total, according to Waxman, includes a dozen days of WHite House e-mails, as well as another 16 days for the office of Vice President Dick Cheney.

The other missing e-mails were from the Council on Environmental Quality, Council of Economic Advisers, Office of Management and Budget, and office of the U.S. Trade Representative, according to Waxman.

Under the Presidential Records Act, the White House must retain internal e-mails. Under President Bush, dozens of top White House officials were given e-mail accounts maintained by the Republican National Committee, which Democrats claim was an effort to avoid record-keeping requirements. The White House has denied that charge, stating that those e-mails involved political activities, not official administration business.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/blogs/thecrypt/0108/Waxman_wants_Fielding_to_testify_on_missing_White_House_emails.html

:hi:

jeez

Another fucking letter. How about a goddamned subpoena?!!!!

The chairman of a House committee said a White House spokesman's statements Thursday in the controversy over missing e-mail conflict with what congressional staffers were told four months ago. Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., scheduled a hearing and challenged the White House to explain spokesman Tony Fratto's remark that "we have absolutely no reason to believe that any e-mails are missing."

The White House provided information indicating 473 days for which various units in the Executive Office of the President had no archived e-mails, wrote Waxman, head of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

Asked to testify on Feb. 15 are White House counsel Fred Fielding; Alan Swendiman, director of the White House Office of Administration; and Allen Weinstein, archivist of the United States.

Waxman called the hearing after Fratto tried to tamp down a growing e-mail controversy by dismissing suggestions that millions of electronic messages are missing from the early days of the Bush administration.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080118/ap_on_go_pr_wh/white_house_e_mail

BHN

At one time I thought we finally had someone who was gonna truly go after the criminal administration. But that just does not seem to be happening. we should all be asking why there is no attempt to stop the crimes...the lies...the obvious obstruction of justice by every person in this hideous administration and all their appointees. Why is Pelosi protecting them? Why is Waxman only sending invitations and not subpoenas? Why are the majority of democrats refusing to put an end to this bullshit?

The alternative would be to realize that our government is an extra-constitutional organization now, more like organized crime than representative government. They keep making their gentleman's agreements behind closed doors to let people resign and speak no more of it. What they needed to do, over and over again, from the S&L Crisis to the October Surprise and the Church Commission and the Iran-Contra to the OSP, lies for war, torture, spying and Cheney's junta was prosecute corruption and let the people know what was going on in their government.