LIVE VIDEO -- patrick fitzgerald to testify before conyers' HJC subcommittee, tomorrow at 1:15 pm!

i'll make sure this is live
tomorrow by noon E.S.T.:

LIVE VIDEO FEED

Tuesday 02/26/2008 - 1:15 PM

2141 Rayburn House Office Building
Subcommittee on Commercial and
Administrative Law

Oversight Hearing on the Implementation
of the U.S. Department of Justice’s
Special Counsel Regulations

Witness List:

Hon. Patrick J. Fitzgerald
U.S. Attorney for Northern District of Illinois
U.S. Department of Justice

Professor Neal Katyal
Georgetown University Law Center
Washington, DC

Lee A. Casey
Partner Baker Hostetler

Carol Elder Bruce, Esq.
Venable, LLP
Washington, DC

Barry Coburn, Esq.
Coburn & Coffman, PLLC


By Direction of the Chairman:

this should be pretty compelling stuff!

~~~~~~~~~~
UPDATED: 02.26.08 @ 4:00 p.m.
~~~~~~~~~~

from rep. waxman’s background materials, on
the lost/missing/destroyed/not looked after
emails — we garner this juicy tidbit:

. . .Mr. Steven McDevitt
February 21, 2008 - Page 13 & 14 of 15

Q: 43. Do you recall any concerns that the searches were not picking up all of the responsive emails?

Or did you hear that the searches ever reyealed erors in the way e-mails were preserved? If so, how did you respond?

Answer: The use of primitive search tools, both in the ARMS search and the search of the .pst files, was raised on a number of occasions. The tools that were used were both slow and primitive compared to current off-the-shelf search technologies. Each time a search was performed it consumed an enorrnous number of staff and contractor resources to set-up and perform the search.

The fact that both the ARMS and .pst file search processes did not search the email attachments was raised on a number of occasions. At the time I believed that this was a short-lived problem as the ECRMS solution would provided fast and effective full search capabilities, including the search of attachments. . .

Q: 44. At some point in late 2005 or early 2006, Ít appears that the White House alerted Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald that some e-mails may not have been provided to the prosecutor in response to his investigation. According to a January 23, 2006,letter from Mr. Fifzgerald to attorney representing former aide to the Vice President, Lewis Libby:

Out of an abundance of caution, we advise you that we have learned that not all email of the Office of the Vice President and the Executive Office of the President for certain time periods in 2003 was preserred through the normal archiving process on the White House computer system.

According to court filings, the White House produced 250 pages of emails from the Office of Vice President to the Special Prosecutor in February 2006. When wcre you first made aware that not all e-mail responsive to the Special Prosecutor’s investigation was preserved through the normal archiving process? Why weren’t these pages included in the original document production? How were you made aware of this?

What steps did the White House take to restore these e-mails? Where did these 250 pages of e-mails come from?

Answer: During the period in October through December 2005, when the .pst file organization and analysis was occurring, it became known that some of the periods for which not email was present in the retained .pst files were the same periods for which Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald had subpoenaed the White House for emails related to his investigation. Most critical were a set of days in early October 2003 where it appears that all email for the Office of the Vice President was missing. A detailed plan was developed to attempt to recover the email for this period.

This plan was prepared by the OCIO staff and presented to White House Counsel. I do not recall the specific details of this plan. A number of the activities identified in the plan were undertaken and to the best of my recollection, the email from the period in question was never recovered.

I worked with OA Counsel and White House Counsel on efforts to provide an explanation to the Special Prosecutor. This included providing a briefing to the Special Prosecutor’s staff on this subject.

There was a parallel effort to attempt to recover all ernail from this period. The results of this effort were the 250 pages of email. However, I was not directly involved in this process and am unable to provide any details relating to the 250 pages of email. . . .

[emphasis supplied.]

sickening. simply sickening.

there, folks, likely went
dick cheney’s most indictable
[easily-provable] offense:
suborning the perjury of one
"scooter" libby — by black-
berry or by e-mail traffic.

p o o f.

[END UPDATE.]