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<DIV><STRONG><FONT size=5>White House E-Mail Lost in Private
Accounts<BR></FONT></STRONG>Messages May Have Included Discussions About Firing
of Eight Prosecutors<BR>
<P><FONT size=-1>By Michael Abramowitz and Dan Eggen<BR>Washington Post Staff
Writers<BR>Thursday, April 12, 2007; A04<BR></FONT></P>
<P></P>
<P>The White House acknowledged yesterday that <STRONG><FONT
color=#0000ff>e-mails dealing with official government business may have been
lost because they were improperly sent through private accounts intended to be
used for political activities.</FONT></STRONG> Democrats have been seeking such
missives as part of an investigation into the firing of eight U.S.
attorneys.</P>
<P>Administration officials said they could offer no estimate of how many
e-mails were lost but indicated that some may involve messages from White House
senior adviser Karl Rove, whose role in the firings has been under scrutiny by
congressional Democrats.</P>
<P>Democrats have charged that Rove and other officials may have used the
private accounts, set up through the Republican National Committee, in an effort
to avoid normal review. Under federal law, the White House is required to
maintain records, including e-mails, involving presidential decision-making and
deliberations. White House aides' use of their political e-mail accounts to
discuss the prosecutor firings has also fanned Democratic accusations that the
actions were politically motivated.</P>
<P>Briefing reporters yesterday about an initial review of the private e-mail
system, White House spokesman Scott Stanzel declined to discuss whether the
political aides were driven by a desire to conduct business outside of potential
review. "I can't speak to people's individual e-mail practices," he said.</P>
<P>Stanzel conceded that the White House had done a poor job of instructing
staff members how to save politically oriented e-mail and said that it has
developed new guidance for the more than 20 staffers who have official as well
as political e-mail addresses. He also said that the White House is trying to
recover the lost e-mails.</P>
<P>"The White House has not at this point done a good enough job at overseeing
the practices of staff with political e-mail accounts," Stanzel said. "Some
officials' e-mails have potentially been lost and that is a mistake that the
White House is aggressively working to fix."</P>
<P><A href="http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/members/w000215/"
target="">Rep. Henry A. Waxman</A> (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Committee
on Oversight and Government Reform, which is investigating the use of outside
accounts, issued a statement saying that the White House disclosure is "a
remarkable admission that raises serious legal and security issues," adding:
"The White House has an obligation to disclose all the information it has."</P>
<P>The controversy over the outside e-mail accounts is a byproduct of the
ongoing showdown over the prosecutor firings, emerging after the administration
recently provided to Congress e-mails from some White House officials that had
been sent from their RNC accounts. Scott Jennings, the White House deputy
director of political affairs, used a "gwb43.com" e-mail account last August to
discuss the replacement of Bud Cummins, who was dismissed as the U.S. attorney
for Arkansas, according to one e-mail.</P>
<P>In another e-mail exchange revealed during the investigation of disgraced
lobbyist Jack Abramoff, a White House official was described as warning that "it
is better to not put this stuff in writing in [the White House] . . . email
system because it might actually limit what they can do to help us, especially
since there could be lawsuits, etc." Abramoff responded in an e-mail that the
message in question "was not supposed to go into the WH system."</P>
<P>The heads of the House and Senate judiciary committees, which are
investigating the prosecutor firings, wrote White House counsel Fred F. Fielding
on March 28 asking that he preserve any e-mails written by White House employees
from non-government e-mail addresses.</P>
<P>Stanzel said in the telephone briefing yesterday that there was a good reason
for providing officials such as Rove and his deputies with political e-mail
accounts: to help them avoid violations of the Hatch Act, which bars government
officials from carrying out political business by using government
resources.</P>
<P>The problem, White House officials said, is that the staffers did not receive
proper guidance about what to do about e-mails that fall into a gray area
between official and political business.</P>
<P>One White House lawyer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity under the
ground rules of the briefing, said staffers are now being advised that if they
have any questions about whether an e-mail is political or official, they should
use their private accounts but preserve a copy for review by White House lawyers
to see whether it needs to be saved under the Presidential Records
Act.</P></DIV></BODY></HTML>