Pull The Other One

The George Bush White House hasn't been known for saving US taxpayers' money but that's not always the case.

Take the tape backup system meant to preserve records, including White House e-mails, in case of a disaster. Well the White House spared the taxpayers a few thousand dollars by recycling those tapes right up until 2003. Now it was just coincidence, a pure fluke, that in reusing those tapes White House e-mails pertaining to the Valerie Plame scandal disappeared - gone forever. Oopsie! Won't happen again. Promise.

From the Washington Post:

The back-ups are meant to preserve records in case of a disaster. They also serve a role in ensuring that federal record-keeping laws are met, according to administration officials and records management experts. Two separate statutes require the White House to preserve federal or presidential records.
The prospects for recovering data that has been overwritten is uncertain, especially if the tapes were re-recorded numerous times, according to technology experts.

In a court affidavit filed shortly before midnight Tuesday, the official in charge of overseeing White House computer systems said that recycling, or overwriting, the backup tapes was "consistent with industry best practices related to tape media management."

But Theresa Payton, chief information officer in the Office of Administration, also said the White House stopped the practice in October 2003 and that back-ups made since then have been preserved.

Payton did not explain in her sworn statement why the White House stopped recycling its back-up tapes. She also said that White House officials have not determined whether e-mail also is missing from 2003 to 2005.

"At this stage, this office does not know if any emails were not properly preserved in the archiving process" during that time, Payton said. "We are continuing our efforts."

Hey, c'mon, we're talking about George Bush and Dick Cheney here - the most powerful man in America and his trained chimp. You don't think they'd pull an underhanded stunt like erasing 18-minutes of White House tapes, do you? Oh, I forgot, that was the other crook.