White House E-mails

Dan Froomkin knocks down definitively the Bush administration's talking point on its violation of federal record-retention laws.

In an afternoon conference call with reporters, White House spokesman Scott Stanzel spread the blame all around. "White House policy did not give clear enough guidance," he said. "The oversight of that wasn't aggressive enough." And individual White House staffers "did not do a good enough job of following existing preservation policy -- or seeking guidance."

Said Stanzel: "I guess the bottom line is that our policy at the White House was not clear enough for employees."

But when I asked Stanzel to read out loud the White House e-mail policy, it seemed clear enough to me: "Federal law requires the preservation of electronic communications sent or received by White House staff," says the handbook that all staffers are given and expected to read and comply with.

"As a result, personnel working on behalf of the EOP [Executive Office of the President] are expected to only use government-provided e-mail services for all official communication."

The handbook further explains: "The official EOP e-mail system is designed to automatically comply with records management requirements."

And if that wasn't clear enough, the handbook notes -- as was the case in the Clinton administration -- that "commercial or free e-mail sites and chat rooms are blocked from the EOP network to help staff members ensure compliance and to prevent the circumvention of the records management requirements."

Meanwhile, MSNBC just went from yet another Don Imus scandal live shot to five minutes of live video of a horse stuck in mud. I'm not kidding. A horse. Stuck in mud.

You would think that emerging evidence of a White House conspiracy to subvert American democracy would merit at least a mention, if not wall-to-wall coverage of the Anna Nicole/Imus/horse-stuck-in-mud variety. But, no, apparently not.

(By the way, I just learned via MSNBC that Anna Nicole's half-sister has written a book about the starlet's life entitled: Train Wreck. Ah, family.)