“Lost” and found – 14 Million Bush computer files
More than four years and $10 million later, 14 million “lost” computer files from the Bush administration will be transferred to the National Archives, a Justice Department lawyer told a federal judge, according to The Washington Post.
Of course, this statement came only after the federal judge had ordered people who worked in the president’s executive office to search e-mail archives and recover portable hard drives in a search for files created between 2003 and 2005, the years that the bulk of the files appeared missing.
Meredith Fuchs, a counsel for one of the plaintiffs in the 2007 lawsuit requesting these files, told the Post that the Justice Department’s statement was “striking” because it admitted that 14 million e-mails needed to be recovered, proving the “level of mismanagement at the White House.”
The files in question can be requested under the Freedom of Information Act once they are transferred to the Archives. Adding these files to the public record will help to eliminate much of the secrecy that the Bush administration became famous for and provide answers to the decisions made throughout his presidency.
With a new administration that is a supposed proponent of government transparency, we’re hopeful that officials will no longer go out of their way to mask their actions from the public.