Bush Presidential Record Partially Destroyed

President George W. Bush

Evidently during President George W. Bush’s White House career millions of e-mail messages were lost. Two advocacy groups sued to have the messages recovered and restored to Bush’s presidential legacy, but it appears some of those e-mail messages are gone for good.

The Obama White House and the advocacy groups reached a deal on Monday over the 22 million lost messages. The National Security Archive and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics sued the Executive in 2007 because from March 2003 – the beginning of the war in Iraq – and October 2005 e-mail messages were not being archived as is required by law.

The Bush administration initially denied that any messages were missing, but one day after leaving office, court documents show that the Bush administration admitted that 22 million e-mail messages were “mislabeled,” according to a report by the Washington Post.

President Barack Obama

Earlier this year, technicians were able to retrieve 61 days of the missing messages from tape backup. And now under the agreement between the two advocacy groups and the Obama administration, another 33 days of e-mail correspondence will be restored.

So of the 20 months of messages “accidentally” removed from the historical record, the Obama administration will restore three.

Source: Deal announced on missing e-mails by Dan Eggen