The Progress Report:

ETHICS
E-mail Evasion

President Bush has consistently attempted to weaken the Presidential Records Act (PRA), which was intended to open presidential documents to the public after a period of no more than 12 years. It was passed in 1978, after Watergate, "to underscore the fact that presidential records belong to the American people, not to the president," notes Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA). But after 2001, Bush issued a decree that now allows "former presidents and their heirs to bar the release of documents for almost any reason." He has promised to veto any attempt to return to the bill's original intent. Recent revelations in the Bush administration's firing of eight U.S. attorneys shed new light on another way the White House has been deliberately evading the PRA -- by using political, non-government e-mail addresses to correspond with one another. Since the White House system automatically keeps records of all e-mails, Bush administration officials -- including Karl Rove -- are using accounts provided by the Republican National Committee (RNC) and the Bush-Cheney '04 campaign to dodge public oversight. Unfortunately, after Waxman notified these groups to begin preserving all e-mails by and from White House officials, administration staffers started looking for new ways to hide presidential records from public scrutiny.

AVOIDING_OVRESIGHT@GWB43.COM: The easiest way to reach a White House official may not be through a White House e-mail address. Rove does "about 95 percent" of his e-mailing using his RNC-based account. Many other aides in the Political Affairs Office "use the RNC account as an alternative to their official government e-mail addresses to help keep their official and political duties separate." Susan Ralston, Rove's former assistant, used not only an RNC account, but also accounts at georgebush.com and aol.com to communicate White House information with lobbyist Jack Abramoff. At one point, an Abramoff aide noted that Ralston told him to e-mail her at her political account because "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." E-mails show that Rove's deputy, J. Scott Jennings, used a political e-mail address -- SJennings@gwb43.com -- to help orchestrate the prosecutor purge. Even former President George H.W. Bush said his son, the current president, spurns e-mailing because the records could be subpoenaed. But the White House e-mail system has been crafted to comply with the PRA. It "automatically copies all messages created by staff and sends them to the White House Office of Records Management for archiving." By avoiding the White House e-mail system, the Bush administration has raised serious questions about "whether it is taking all necessary steps to maintain presidential records to provide a full accounting of all activities" during Bush's tenure.

COMMUNICATING THROUGH TEXTING: On Monday, Waxman, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, wrote to the RNC and the Bush-Cheney '04 campaign and directed them to preserve all e-mails by and for White House officials because they "may be relevant to multiple congressional investigations." He also requested that they meet with the committee about the legal issues involved in conducting official government business using partisan e-mail accounts. But since receiving those letters, White House officials have decided that more evasion -- rather than more transparency -- is now necessary. U.S. News reports that some aides "have subsequently bought their own private E-mail system through a cellular phone or Blackberry server. When asked how he communicated, one aide pulled out a new personal cellphone and said, 'texting.'"

POLITICAL MOTIVES: Much of the communication done on the private e-mail servers appears to blur the lines between politics and official White House duties. Ralston invited two lobbyists working for Abramoff to use her RNC e-mail account to avoid "security issues" with the White House e-mail system, writing, "I now have an RNC blackberry which you can use to e-mail me at any time. No security issues like my WH email." Ralston resigned in Oct. 2006, after receiving tickets to concerts and sporting events from Abramoff and his team. Jennings used his gwb43.com address to push Rove protege and former RNC research director Tim Griffin into place as U.S. attorney in Arkansas. Former deputy to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales Kyle Sampson admitted in a December e-mail that Griffin's appointment was largely political and "important to Harriet [Miers], Karl, etc." Jennings also used his gwb43.com account "to recruit applicants for official government positions through the 'Kentucky Republican Voice,' an internet site that describes itself as 'the best source for Kentucky Republican grassroots information.' ... In each case, these postings encouraged applicants to contact Mr. Jennings at his 'gwb43.com' address." While the Bush administration has repeatedly "denied any political motives" in its prosecutor purge, the repeated use of political accounts for communication casts doubt on this assertion. As RNC spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt noted, "As a matter of course, the RNC provides server space and equipment to certain White House personnel in order to assist them with their political efforts."

LOSING PRESUMPTION OF EXECUTIVE PRIVILEGE: The Bush administration has repeatedly invoked executive privilege as a reason to withhold information on the prosecutor purge. But by using outside political e-mail addresses, White House officials have lost the presumption of executive privilege. As The Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum noted, staffers "using private accounts specifically to evade legitimate congressional oversight" might lose their claims to executive privilege. If they were "primarily discussing the U.S. Attorney firings on personal and RNC accounts, that implicitly means that they themselves weren't treating it as the kind of official business that would be protected by executive privilege," he added.