White House Admits Millions of Emails Were Poorly Archived

ABC News’ Ariane DeVogue Reports: In a filing that will disturb individuals concerned with the preservation of historic records, the White House is once again admitting that during 2003-2005 there is a possibility that millions of emails were not properly archived on White House servers.

Although the allegations of missing emails first surfaced in April 2007, the White House is still unable to ascertain whether back up tapes were able to capture the missing electronic archives.

The latest admission comes as a result of a lawsuit filed in federal court by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics (CREW) against the White House.

Theresa Payton of the Executive Office of the President, submitted a declaration last night saying that the Executive Office is undertaking an "independent assessment" to determine "whether there may be anomalies in Exchange email counts for any particular days resulting from the potential failure to properly archive emails for the 2003-2005 time period."

Today, CREW blasted the White House in a statement saying, "The deletion of millions of email beginning in March 2003 coupled with the White House’s destruction of back-up copies of those deleted email mean that there are no back-up copies of emails deleted during the period March 2003 through October 2003. The significance of this time-period cannot be overstated: the U.S. went to war with Iraq, top White House officials leaked the covert identity of Valerie Plame Wilson and the Justice Department opened a criminal investigation into their actions."

Another group suing the White House, The National Security Archives, released a statement on its website, "It strikes me as odd that they recognized a problem and changed their practice in 2003 to start saving the backups," commented Meredith Fuchs, the Archive’s General Counsel, "but four-and-a-half years later they still have not yet figured out whether or what e-mails were deleted."

She added, "It also is troubling that the problem may have started before October 2003, and they acknowledge that back-ups prior to that period were recycled and are gone."