The Difference Between a Backup and an Archive Rears its Head at the White House

14 Million E-mail Messages Found. So what?

The Washington Post today reported that a Justice Department lawyer told a federal judge yesterday that the Bush administration ordered to transfer White House e-mail messages missing from four years ago, will meet its legal requirement and transfer the e-mails to the National Archives.

It's been a long legal battle between the Bush Administration, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), and the National Security Archive. For a year and a half, the Bush office argued strenuously that the e-mails were gone forever. Even after being ordered just last week to recover the e-mails from back-up tape, they continued their appeals.

Now, just six days before the moving vans pull in, they report that they have found 14 million messages and will transfer them to the Archives. Hmmm?

Forget the gamesmanship in this whole thing, what is it that they have actually found? What is it they will be transferring to the National Archives, back-up tapes of the mail-server for the dates in question? If so, then yes these tapes would certainly contain the so-called "missing emails", but definately not in any searchable format.

If this is the case, and I am only speculating here, then the Bush Administration has in fact met its legal obligations, but all the National Archives gets is a bunch of unsearchable computer tapes.

If you know more about this, please comment.