Bush White House failed to archive most e-mails for 21 days

The George W. Bush administration failed to archive 83 percent of e-mails for 21 days during a two-year period, according to watchdog groups that retrieved the information in lawsuit settlements.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and the National Security Archive filed a lawsuit against the Bush White House in 2007 after discovering the administration could not account for millions of e-mails. In 2009, the Obama White House settled the case, agreeing to audit archived messages and those restored from backup tapes for 21 separate days between 2003 and 2005. Those days were identified as having a suspiciously low amount of e-mail traffic.

The comparison revealed that 83 percent of the e-mails on the backup tapes were not included in the archived collection and would have been lost if not for the lawsuits, the groups announced on Monday.

CREW, a government accountability group, and the National Security Archive, which releases declassified documents through the Freedom of Information Act, are concerned that more e-mails could be missing, because the White House used flawed methodology to identify those days that had low volumes of e-mails. The organizations sent letters on Monday to the U.S. Archivist, the White House counsel, the federal chief information officer, and the administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, asking them to resolve a governmentwide problem of poor e-mail management.

"The need for immediate action could not be greater. With each passing day, we lose another slice of our history. Yet there are encouraging signs as well. After much trial and error, the White House now has in place an effective electronic records management system that could serve as a model for the rest of the federal government," they said in their letter to the White House.

"But much work remains," they said. "We respectfully suggest that the White House convene a high-level commission of White House and agency representatives, as well as outside groups and individual, to develop a plan of action."