WASHINGTON – Computer technicians have found 22 million missing White House e-mails from the administration of President George W. Bush and the Obama administration is searching for dozens more days' worth of potentially lost e-mail from the Bush years, according to two groups that filed suit over the failure by the Bush White House to install an electronic record keeping system.

The two private groups — Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and the National Security Archive — said Monday they were settling the lawsuits they filed against the Executive Office of the President in 2007.

It will be years before the public sees any of the recovered e-mails because they will now go through the National Archives' process for releasing presidential and agency records. Presidential records of the Bush administration won't be available until 2014 at the earliest.

Former Bush White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said the 22 million e-mails already had been recovered while Bush was still in office and that misleading statements about the former administration's work demonstrate "a continued anti-Bush agenda, nearly a year after a new president was sworn in."

"The liberal groups CREW and National Security Archive litigate for sport, distort the facts and have consistently tried to create a spooky conspiracy out of standard IT issues," Stanzel said in a statement.

The 22 million e-mails "would never have been found but for our lawsuits and pressure from Capitol Hill," said Anne Weismann, chief counsel for CREW. "It was only then that they did this reanalysis and found as a result that there were 22 million e-mails that they were unable to account for before."

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said the Bush administration had been dismissive of congressional requests that the administration recover the e-mails. Leahy said it was "another example of the Bush administration's reflexive resistance to congressional oversight and the public's right to know."

The tally of missing e-mails, the additional searches and the settlement are the latest development in a political controversy that stemmed from the Bush White House's failure to install a properly working electronic record keeping system. Two federal laws require the White House to preserve its records.

The two private organizations say there is not yet a final count on the extent of missing White House e-mail and there may never be a complete tally.

Meredith Fuchs, general counsel to the National Security Archive, said "many poor choices were made during the Bush administration and there was little concern about the availability of e-mail records despite the fact that they were contending with regular subpoenas for records and had a legal obligation to preserve their records."

"We may never discover the full story of what happened here," said Melanie Sloan, CREW's executive director. "It seems like they just didn't want the e-mails preserved."

Sloan said the latest count of misplaced e-mails "gives us confirmation that the Bush administration lied when they said no e-mails were missing."

The two groups say the 22 million White House e-mails were previously mislabeled and effectively lost.

The government now can find and search 22 million more e-mails than it could in late 2005 and the settlement means that the Obama administration will restore 94 calendar days of e-mail from backup tape, said Kristen Lejnieks, an attorney representing the National Security Archive.

Stanzel, the former White House spokesman, said that the 94 days of e-mails to be recovered from back-up tapes consist of 61 calendar days already planned in the Bush era and an additional 33 days of recovery that the Obama White House have agreed to recover as part of the settlement of the court case.

Sheila Shadmand, another lawyer representing the National Security Archive, said the Obama administration is making a strong effort to clean up "the electronic data mess left behind by the prior administration."

Records released as a result of the lawsuits reveal that the Bush White House was aware during the president's first term in office that the e-mail system had serious archiving problems, which didn't become publicly known until 2006, when federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald disclosed them during his criminal investigation of the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame.

A Microsoft Corp. document on the Bush White House's e-mail problems states that Microsoft was called in to help find electronic messages in October 2003, more than two years before the problem surfaced publicly. October 2003 was the month that the Justice Department began gearing up its criminal investigation into who in the Bush administration leaked the identity of Plame, the wife of Bush administration war critic Joseph Wilson.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091215/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_white_house_e_
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Ooooo....how excellent.

So these emails will be BIG NEWS!!!!!

But the ones that detailed the global warming farce have been, for the most part, had their importance dimished by the MSM.

Fantastic.

who in the Bush administration leaked the identity of Plame, the wife of Bush administration war critic Joseph Wilson.


If intentional or premeditated, the outing of the identity of an undercover CIA agent is a crime punishable by death.

It's a very serious crime!

It's an act of treason!

Yet, the New York Times had absolutely no issues with printing it.

Perhaps you should suggest that the editors and reporters also be accused of treason??

They don't have a National Security Clearance holding them to secrecy!

They can say all they want. They aren't privy to National Security information.

That does not change the fact that, according to your logic, reporting it for the world to see was a treasonous act.

6 of one, half dozen of the other.

It's rather hypocritical to scream that one set of people should be tried for treason, and totally excuse another set for doing what amounts to the same action.

Perhaps some of those emails will expose affairs...:O

So, does this explain why he has never replied to any of my 22 million e-mails I've sent him?

Bush's entire term was an act of treason!

My Giddyup Poll says this is just 100% heresay.

Oh Yeah,
That changes everything.
If the VP calls you and tells you something. You have no reason to suspect he just violated a National Security protocol.
Quite the opposite in fact!
You'd expect him not to and suspect what he said was legal!

Unless of course they required Journalists to go to law school.

50 U.S.C. § 421 : US Code - Section 421: Protection of identities of certain United States undercover intelligence officers, agents, informants, and sources


(a) Disclosure of information by persons having or having had
access to classified information that identifies covert agent
Whoever, having or having had authorized access to classified
information that identifies a covert agent, intentionally discloses
any information identifying such covert agent to any individual not
authorized to receive classified information, knowing that the
information disclosed so identifies such covert agent and that the
United States is taking affirmative measures to conceal such covert
agent's intelligence relationship to the United States, shall be
fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than ten years, or
both.
(b) Disclosure of information by persons who learn identity of
covert agents as result of having access to classified
information
Whoever, as a result of having authorized access to classified
information, learns the identify of a covert agent and
intentionally discloses any information identifying such covert
agent to any individual not authorized to receive classified
information, knowing that the information disclosed so identifies
such covert agent and that the United States is taking affirmative
measures to conceal such covert agent's intelligence relationship
to the United States, shall be fined under title 18 or imprisoned
not more than five years, or both.
(c) Disclosure of information by persons in course of pattern of
activities intended to identify and expose covert agents
Whoever, in the course of a pattern of activities intended to
identify and expose covert agents and with reason to believe that
such activities would impair or impede the foreign intelligence
activities of the United States, discloses any information that
identifies an individual as a covert agent to any individual not
authorized to receive classified information, knowing that the
information disclosed so identifies such individual and that the
United States is taking affirmative measures to conceal such
individual's classified intelligence relationship to the United
States, shall be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than
three years, or both.
(d) Imposition of consecutive sentences
A term of imprisonment imposed under this section shall be
consecutive to any other sentence of imprisonment.


OK,
So it's not a death sentence.

If the VP calls and says " Hey....this person is an undercover agent for the CIA "...then any reporter worth his salt would look into it...find out if it's true...and realize that reporting it would be a National Security risk.

I can't believe you would actually want one person tried for treason, while totally excusing another for basically the same thing.

I thought you said you weren't a Republican.

The Times Reporter had no reason to believe he was being told information that was of National Security.

If he did he should have went to the FBI and his source should have been arrested.
As is, you'd have to prove he knew she was still an active agent.
If you could then yeah, prosecute them too.
Either way Rove and Cheney could be guilty of treason if the lost emails turn up in one of these 22 million.

They were return emails from all the women he propositioned tellin' him, no way in heII. I think I saw one from Oprah tellin' him that to.