Via The Impolitic, an apparently authentic recent photo of Karl Rove with a brochure for Coptix, the nameserver for the RNC e-mail accounts that White House staffers have been using in order to avoid the archiving requirements of the Presidential Records Act.
Rove spotted in Chattanooga with brochure for gwb43.com nameserver host
Correntewire.com
March 31, 2007
[visit the link for the photograph]
Notice the brochure under Rove’s arm: That’s a Coptix logo
[snip]
Now, who—you may ask—is Coptix? Let’s review:
Coptix administers
gwb43.com’s nameservers. (Rove privatized his email atgwb43.com, in violation of the Presidential Records Act).
Continued here.
See also today’s New York Times editorial, “The Rovian Era.” (via The Mahablog).
Updated here on April 4, 2007. Apparently the photo was part of a dirty tricks/disinformation campaign. Not that such a thing would have any historical parallels, of course.
April 2, 2007 at 6:21 am |
It is unclear what role, if any, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has played in providing guidance to White House officials on segregation of official from political records. I would guess the White House counsel’s office would be the primary source of guidance inside the Executive Office of the President on these matters. While Richard Nixon was President, there was no segregation requirement. In his files and tapes, personal and official information often was interfiled or intertwined. It was up to NARA’s archivists, which I once was, later to separate them.
The Supreme Court addressed the issue of private political association in in Nixon v. Administrator of General Services.
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=433&invol=425
The court then found that the President has a right of private political association as well as public political association.
When I worked with the Nixon records, archivists had to decide when Nixon was speaking as President, with the potential to exercise statutory functions and when he is speaking solely as head of his political party. One or two newspaper articles covered this during the 1980s. James Hastings, then director of NARA’s Nixon Project, explained in 1984 how his archivists handled the question of private-political association:
“in order for us to decide that a paper is not personal it has to have a direct connection with a presidential-constitutional duty . . . . for example, if an aide wrote to another aide that ‘Sen. Jones is a great guy and we should support him for reelection,’ that’s personal; if the letter said ‘Sen. Jones is a great guy who supports our Vietnam policy and we should support him for reelection,’ we would say that’s a presidential document.”
More recent Presidents and their aides have had to make segregation decisions at the time records were created. I don’t know how the White House Office of Records Management has handled this since the federal government increasingly moved to electronic recordkeeping. Within the federal government, records managers have the right to look through materials that officials want to remove when they resign or retire, to ensure that anything governmental is not removed improperly. Officials are not supposed to remove from the official files and take with them materials that are covered by the Federal Records Act.
In the case of the White House, depending on the component involved, either the Presidential Records Act or the Federal Records Act may apply. From a records management viewpoint, the best way to ensure that designations are made properly is to tell officials to create separate folders within a document management (DM) or electronic records management system (ERMS), one marked official, one marked personal (or political). That would enable a third party within the organization with the necessary skills and knowledge to check behind officials’ determinations to ensure that material, including email, had been designated properly as one or the other.
However, I think there are restrictions on using government property for political purposes so requiring people to make up folders within the same electronic recordkeeping system may not be feasible. I don’t know actually if officials would be permitted to create electronic folders entitled “political” within a government recordkeeping system. This gets very complicated. (You may remember the Clinton era questions that arose over which telephones were used for fund raising calls) I have no idea what guidance the White House actually has offered its officials and staff on this. It was a lot easier in the days of paper based filing. You could set up separate file cabinets in an office for official and for political files.
Submitted from home on personal time at 8:19 Eastern time
April 2, 2007 at 10:19 am |
As always, thank you for your insight into these issues, Ms. Krusten.
April 3, 2007 at 4:55 am |
For additional information and perspectives on White House records and email, see
“The Email Trail” on NPR at
http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2007/03/30/02
and
this article which includes quotes from archival experts Bruce Montgomery and Steve Hensen:
http://www.motherjones.com/washington_dispatch/2007/03/white_house_emails.html
I tried sending this Monday evening but must not have hit the submit button, sorry.
Submitted from home Tuesday morning at 6:54 am Eastern time
April 3, 2007 at 4:21 pm |
Three recent articles of interest relating to electronic recordkeeping in the WH — several perspectives.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,130276-c,privacysecurity/article.html
http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2007/03/30/02
http://www.motherjones.com/washington_dispatch/2007/03/white_house_emails.html
I hope this works, I tried to submit comments with two of these earlier. Found the third link later.
Submitted Tuesday evening from home.
April 4, 2007 at 4:15 pm |
Sorry about that, Ms. Krusten — because your comments had so many links, they got caught in our spam trap.
April 7, 2007 at 10:54 am |
“Awaiting moderation”, eh? Well since the post hardly fits your groupthink, I’ll just mosey on outta here — fairly certain that THAT bit of reality won’t see the light of day on your blog. Toodles.
April 7, 2007 at 2:58 pm |
Yes, like many lists and groups, comments are moderated here. On many rightwing blogs, of course, comments are not permitted at all. Groupthink and all, doncha know. And I certainly reserve the right to censor trolls who think an elaborate hoax by a bunch of wingnut computer geeks was an epic “win.” So mosey on along, now.