Court orders White House to preserve e-mails
WASHINGTON -- A federal judge has ordered the Bush White House to preserve its e-mails, just days before a new administration takes over.
The court's preservation notice Wednesday stems from a ongoing lawsuit by private groups over allegedly missing electronic messages, and allegations the White House failed to properly monitor its internal communications among staff.
It has been a thorny legal and political issue for outgoing Bush officials, who are in the process of transferring more than 300 million e-mail messages and 25,000 boxes of documents to the National Archives.
U.S. District Judge Henry Kennedy instructed officials to search all White House workstations "and to collect and preserve all e-mails sent or received between March 2003 and October 2005."
Executive office personnel were also ordered to surrender any e-mail from that 31-month period.
There was no immediate response from the White House, but officials said in the past they had succeeded in accounting for the electronic correspondence after much hard work.
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The court's preservation notice Wednesday stems from a ongoing lawsuit by private groups over allegedly missing electronic messages, and allegations the White House failed to properly monitor its internal communications among staff.
It has been a thorny legal and political issue for outgoing Bush officials, who are in the process of transferring more than 300 million e-mail messages and 25,000 boxes of documents to the National Archives.
U.S. District Judge Henry Kennedy instructed officials to search all White House workstations "and to collect and preserve all e-mails sent or received between March 2003 and October 2005."
Executive office personnel were also ordered to surrender any e-mail from that 31-month period.
There was no immediate response from the White House, but officials said in the past they had succeeded in accounting for the electronic correspondence after much hard work.