Nearly two years after CREW sued the Bush White House for both its refusal to restore the millions of missing White House emails and its failure to put in place an effective electronic record keeping system, the White House has finally released documents that support CREW’s allegations.

CREW, along with 36 other organizations, has sent a letter to the White House urging that the White House's Office of Administration (OA) once again become an agency subject to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), as had been the case in previous administrations.  The letter can be found here.

Of the request to subject the OA to FOIA, Anne Weismann, CREW's chief counsel, said:

For eight long years the Bush administration used legal tactics such as changing the status of OA, to keep the public in the dark about what transpired at the White House. Starting with his own offices, President Obama now has the perfect opportunity to make good on his promise of transparency. We hope he decides to keep his word to the American people.

As the letter from the 37 groups details, allowing public access to the activities of the Executive Office of the President and its components like OA plays a critical role in meeting the president's commitment to transparency and accountability. 

Some background to give context to letter:  From its inception in 1977, OA functioned consistently as an agency subject to the FOIA, adopting comprehensive FOIA regulations and processing hundreds of FOIA requests. The Bush administration radically departed from all prior administrations when, in the midst of litigating a FOIA request from CREW seeking documentation of the millions of missing White House emails, it decided OA no longer is an agency. That change in course meant that OA need not comply with CREW's or any other information requests under the FOIA.

CREW is still in court working to uncover the millions of missing White House emails.  For background on that scandal, check out our report, Without A Trace.

On Friday, CREW sent out a statement about the latest developments in our case against the White House to obtain missing emails.  We have been making progress in the courts with this case.

CREW filed its opposition to the White House's motion to dismiss CREW’s lawsuit challenging the failure of the White House to recover millions of missing emails and install an effective electronic archiving system. The White House is arguing that because it has re-examined the problem and restored a limited number of emails, CREW's claims should be dismissed. As CREW explained in its opposition, the latest White House analysis does not answer the fundamental questions of how many emails are missing, what caused the problem and whether it has been fixed.

What's odd is that we filed the suit against the Bush White House, but we're getting the same responses from the Bush administration.  

Anne Weismann, CREW's Chief Counsel, said: "

We are disappointed the new administration seems no more eager than the last to recover the missing emails and implement a system that adequately preserves records belonging to the American people.

This is a major, and disturbing, development.  CREW believes in transparency in government, which has been sadly lacking for the past eight years.  We've been told that transparency would be a hallmark of the Obama administration.  This development in the email case doesn't reflect that commitment.

The traditional media has picked up this story.  The first line from the Associated Press article captures the essence of what's happening:

The Obama administration, siding with former President George W. Bush, is trying to kill a lawsuit that seeks to recover what could be millions of missing White House e-mails.

Two advocacy groups suing the Executive Office of the President say that large amounts of White House e-mail documenting Bush's eight years in office may still be missing, and that the government must undertake an extensive recovery effort. They expressed disappointment that Obama's Justice Department is continuing the Bush administration's bid to get the lawsuits dismissed.

During its first term, the Bush White House failed to install electronic record-keeping for e-mail when it switched to a new system, resulting in millions of messages that could not be found.

CREW's Anne Weismann talked to reporter Keith Thomson about the missing White House emails and the comparison to Watergate.  Mr. Thomson wrote it up at Huffington Post:

Perhaps the most frequently-asked question about Watergate is: "How could the conspirators have been so foolish, gabbing away even though they knew the tape recorder was on?" The answer: They were human, and, as such, erred.

Anne Weisman, chief counsel for the non-profit Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, compared the infamous gap in the Nixon-Haldeman Oval Office tape to the 14 million White House e-mails from March 2003 to October 2005 that were missing during the investigation of the Valerie Plame CIA leak, when they might have yielded a smoking gun.

"The Watergate Tapes had an eighteen-and-a-half minute gap where [Nixon secretary] Rosemary Woods did whatever she did," Weisman told me. "We're talking here about a gap of at least fourteen million e-mails."

After eight long years of secrecy, on his first full day in office, President Obama issued several executive orders signaling a new era in government openness and accountability.  CREW has worked tirelessly to obtain vital information from the Bush administration.  Often, our efforts were blocked.  But, that can change.  We know which documents and records should be available.  Today, CREW called on the Obama administration to fulfill its commitment to transparency by releasing records withheld from public view by the Bush administration, specifically:

The Department of Justice should release documents related to the interview of former Vice President Cheney provided to the FBI as part of Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald’s investigation into the leak of Valerie Plame Wilson’s covert identity;

The Secret Service should release all requested White House visitor records and remove the veil of secrecy that currently surrounds the White House;

The White House should release all documents that explain why the Bush administration refused to act for years in the face of an internal report documenting the mysterious disappearance of millions of emails from White House servers;

The White House should release all documents that explain why the Bush administration refused to implement an effective electronic record keeping system in the face of evidence that its current system was an abysmal failure, notwithstanding the development of two other workable systems;

The White House should release documents requested by Congress that explain the full role of President Bush and his staff in the mass firings of U.S. Attorneys;

The Department of Homeland Security should release all documents explaining why the Bush administration decided to bypass property of Ray L. Hunt, a major contributor to the Bush presidential library, in its sitting decision for the border fence between the United States and Mexico;

The White House should release all documents of the Council on Environmental Quality related to the efforts of the Bush administration to distort scientific conclusions, warnings, and predictions on climate change.

CREW’s executive director Melanie Sloan said today:

Signing an executive order signaling openness is one thing, actually releasing documents is another. This the perfect opportunity for the Obama administration to back up its words with concrete action.

First, the claim from the Department of Justice:

A Justice Department lawyer told a federal judge yesterday that the Bush administration will meet its legal requirement to transfer e-mails to the National Archives after spending more than $10 million to locate 14 million e-mails reported missing four years ago from White House computer files.

Civil division trial lawyer Helen H. Hong made the disclosure at a court hearing provoked by a 2007 lawsuit filed by outside groups to ensure that politically significant records created by the White House are not destroyed or removed before President Bush leaves office at noon on Tuesday. She said the department plans to argue in a court filing this week that the administration's successful recent search renders the lawsuit moot.

Then, the response from CREW:

Her remarks prompted Anne Weisman, the counsel for one of two plaintiffs in the lawsuit, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), to say, "I'll believe it when I see it." (emphasis added) Weisman said she hoped the administration's efforts to recover the e-mails can be verified by an independent expert, noting that officials have repeatedly declined to detail the procedures they used. She also said questions persist about whether backup tapes still existed for all of the days for which e-mails were reported missing.

We learned today that CREW has survived an effort to dismiss our case against the Bush administration over missing White House emails. DC District Court Judge Henry Kennedy upheld lawsuits brought by CREW and the National Security Archive challenging the White House’s failure to properly store and recover millions of emails.  Background on the case, which we filed in , can be found here.

CREW's Melanie Sloan issued this statement:

The Court has rejected the administration’s argument and upheld CREW’s right to sue the White House for failing to comply with the Federal Records Act. The White House, which values secrecy above nearly all else, finally will be held accountable for the millions of missing emails. This is a huge victory for government transparency and the American people.

More from the Wall Street Journal:

A federal judge on Monday ruled against the Bush administration in a court battle over the White House's problem-plagued email system.

U.S. District Judge Henry Kennedy said two private groups may pursue their case as they press the administration to recover millions of possibly missing electronic messages.

Judge Kennedy rejected the government's request to throw out the lawsuits filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and the National Security Archive.

The Bush administration had argued that the courts didn't have the power to order the White House to retrieve any missing emails.

A document obtained by the Associated Press in August says the White House is missing as many as 225 days of email dating back to 2003.

The nine-page outline of the White House's email problems invites companies to bid on a project to recover the missing electronic messages. The White House hasn't said whether it has hired a contractor.

CREW executive director Melanie Sloan called the ruling "a clear victory for the American people. The Executive Office of the President does have to answer for the missing email."

The Bush administration's missing email saga continues.  CREW's Anne Weismann has it figured out -- the Bush White House wants to run out the clock and keep the public from seeing what are the public records of George Bush's presidency.

 The White House is missing as many as 225 days of e-mail dating back to 2003 and there is little if any likelihood a recovery effort will be completed by the time the Bush administration leaves office, according to an internal White House draft document obtained by The Associated Press.

The nine-page outline of the White House's e-mail problems invites companies to bid on a project to recover the missing electronic messages.

The work would be carried out through April 19, 2009, according to the Office of Administration request for contractors' proposals, which was dated June 20.

Last week, the White House declined to comment on the document.

On Wednesday, the White House refused to talk about internal White House contracting procedures, but said the information is "outdated and seriously inaccurate." It would not elaborate. The White House also declined to say whether it has hired a contractor for the work yet.

"With an eye on the clock, the White House continues to drag its feet and do everything possible to postpone public access to the records of this presidency," said Anne Weismann, chief counsel to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a private watchdog group.

Yesterday, CREW reported that the Bush administration admitted that it failed to preserve ANY backup tapes for the period March 1, 2003 through May 22, 2003, a period of time during which the U.S. went to war in Iraq.

Today, the Washington Post reported on the stunning admission -- and its implications: 

The Bush administration has not found disaster recovery files for White House e-mails from a three-month time period in 2003, according to court documents filed this week, raising the possibility that messages sent before and after the invasion of Iraq may never be recovered.

The White House chief information officer, Theresa Payton, said in a sworn declaration that the White House has identified more than 400 computer backup tapes from March through September of 2003 but that the earliest recorded file was dated May 23 of that year.

That period was one of the most crucial of the Bush presidency. The United States launched the invasion of Iraq on March 20, 2003, and President Bush declared the end of major combat operations on May 1.

Payton and other officials said that older e-mails could still be contained on the tapes because of the way the files are dated.

The administration also said it is still searching computer archives for e-mails that have been filed in the wrong "digital drawer." In addition, Payton and other officials have said that any e-mails missing from the White House archiving system might still be available on disaster recovery tapes.

But that did not satisfy an advocacy group suing the administration for e-mail records.

"We're talking about the White House, and documentation of our history that may be lost," said Anne Weismann, chief counsel for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. Administration officials had acknowledged last year that thousands of e-mails might be missing from White House servers, but the administration has shifted course in recent months to arguing there is still no clear evidence of a problem. A White House spokesman declined to comment yesterday.