EW, I’m wondering if there’s a legal requirement on congresscriters to save email. I am pretty sure there’s such a requirement on the WH, but a congressional office? I dunno. Guess the congressman thinks he’s got some message tucked away somewhere that helps him.

CTI Consulting looks impressive. From their electronic services section:
â€With deep experience handling complex multinational litigations and investigations, the computer forensics professionals at FTI focus on the needs of companies facing time-sensitive situations involving electronic data, networks and systems. We help organizations meet requirements for uncovering, analyzing and producing data from a variety of sources, including e-mail, voicemail, backup tapes, shared server files and databases—often on multiple continents.â€

Wish they were digging around at the WH…

Um..that would be FTI Consulting. Aging brain. Sigh.

Good faith? You assume much yourself, Jodi.
Feeney’s (attorneys are) more likely working to find some email message that shows either his innocence or deflects some aspect of potential charges.
And EW’s statement is pretty tough to dispute: the guys nicking around on the edge of the law seem to be associated with deleting/destroying emails. Until they need them to defend.
Duh.

marksb,

it is simple. The cops think you are hiding the body. You need to be in their good graces, so you hire someone to dig up your back yard and cellar to demonstrate â€good faith.â€

Now maybe there isn’t a body or maybe it was dropped in the middle of the lake with 6 cement blocks tied to it. Who knows.

Taking a lie detector test is also useful.

JODI

what is your GUESS based on that Feeney is demonstrating â€good faith?â€
please back up your assumptions with something more than your own good faith or naivete

Actually, WO, Goodling didn’t get to DOJ until 2002. But I see your point.

My point about 2004 was that was the point (as far as we know) when criminal investigators first learned people were using teh RNC server to hide certain activities.

the shit stain thinks she’s relevant and shit …

actually the shit stain is an amalgamation of freepi (probably paid) who come here to disrupt or conversations

that the shit stain just serves to â€sharpen our claws†is just another unintended consequence of the freepi incompetence that rules the repuglican party

It would be helpful to know what email system mailbox is being reconstructed, Rep. Feeney’s official government business email address (the one supported by Congress’ IT department) or a personal one like gmail, yahoo, rr.com or RNC.COM.

I’ll wager it’s the former, the congressmen’s official mailbox. If it is, and if there are no other known reports of problems with the congressional email system, I think you can assume they’re reconstructing messages that were deleted by the congressmen or his staff, and that the Congressmen, Rep. Tom Feeney (R-FL) has been sufficiently motivated by investigators to cooperate.

Feeney’s reputation as a corrupted official, in combination with his cooperation with the Abramoff investigation, adds up to trouble for Feeney and probably others.

But why would DOJ entrust a private company to produce the material when they could secure their own agent to do the work if given consent by the Congressmen?

What’s more interesting to me is that the White House’s stonewalling on its response to subpoenas to produce 5 million email messages it claims to have lost, an explanation of how, a description of what backups it possesses, the identity of the spectral contractor it blamed for the problem, the role of the Bush policy on records retention.

Either the White House has demonstrated woeful neglect of custodial responsibilities under the law in keeping presidential records and is trying to avoid accountability for the same, or it is trying to conceal smoking gun evidence in the US Attorney scandal or other oversight inquiries.

Oddly, our law enforcement branch of government, the DOJ and her independent counsels, are not investigating this issue or working to resolve it. A citizen’s group, CREW, is suing the government in court to obey the law.

Under Bush’s unitary executive theory and Mukasey as AG, we can neither expect the DOJ to investigate potential criminal acts in the executive branch or enforce contempt of congress. Their legal view is that discussion between the legislative and executive branch will resolve these issues, and that the legal system including our courts have no role unless a citizen’s group can get standing.

Forensic computer science is a big deal in litigation since the advent and adoption of Internet email in business (and government.) It has changed discovery practices and opened the door to a telling source of information. Big business focused on risk management has leaned to tame the beast and hide the smoking gun (that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud – just kidding) and limit the trail by enforcing discipline in retention and destruction policy that keeps only essential and uncompromising documents and purges the rest. The trail left by email accompanied with other documents like calendars, whether electronic or hardcopy, contracts, drafts of contracts and other document tell a story that few eyewitnesses could recall without reference.

Jeff

That’s when the Abramoff investigation took off. GT cooperated right away and handed over Abramoff’s corporate emails, which included one from Susan Ralston referencing the RNC server.

Neil

I can think of two scenarios that would involve a private company. One, Feeney has been threatened with obstruction unless he hands over emails that DOJ has reason to believe once existed. So Feeney, having tried to destroy the emails, would have an incentive to reconstruct them to avoid any obstruction charge.

But there’s also the Jefferson precedent. DOJ isn’t going to be able to get Feeney’s emails directly. So they’re going to have to ask him for them, and have him hand them over directly. Which may well mean Feeney has to reconstruct the emails himself.

Got it, thanks.

And really, those two are not mutually exclusive EW. Feeney has a problem brewing and he is scrambling; either to protect himself on the number and severity of charges, or to cooperate. Either way, the attempt to reconstruct emails may be at the urging of the DOJ.

So bmaz, is the â€Gee, who’d have thunk it departmentâ€,
for the discovery that the Democrats actually think they have a message on Iraq and FISA?

I think he’s probably right, though. It does interfere with the: Kumbayah, we are here to do Bush’s bidding on Iraq and FISA moment if they actually had a vote on something other than Bush’s priorities.

Amen.

I think it’s pretty incredible that they ran on an accountability and oversight platform and then they proffer up,

-no impeachment, no matter what
-no subpoena enforcement
-no response to blocking witnesses, including when the Pentagon refuses to produce a specific requested witnes
-no criminal charges
-no demand for release of information on illegal kidnapping and torture of el-Masri so his suit could have proceeded
-no breath wasted on any of the hundred at GITMO and tens of thousand in Iraq/Afghanistan being illegally held and abused
-no steps taken to end the Iraq war
-no steps taken to shore up the Afghanistan position
-no …

Well, Hugh’s lists are proof that you can’t be a good scrivener for the Republicans and Democrats of the last 6 years if you have any arthritis in your fingers, so I’ll stop.

Mary – I have been gearing up for a trial that started this morning (thankfully, settled in the first hour); and have been a total space cadet on time lately. Sometime in the last few days, may even have been yesterday, there was an article in the NYT about the FBI investigation of Nissour Square. The article painted a happy face of all the progress; I saw nothing but absolute bullshit preparing the ground for doing nothing.

Ah, it was yesterday. nolo mentioned the article and here is the substance to my response. â€I read the article on this in the Times and found the conclusions contained therein on the part of the FBI to be amazing, sloppy and questionable. How they came to conclude that three of the killings were justified is beyond me. The statements of Democratic Rep. Price were also abhorrent. I am glad they are doing something, but I don’t like what they are doing if this is representative.â€

EPU’ed from earlier thread on throwning AGAG under the bus.

â€When Bush praised Gonzales as a man of integrity and decency, Justice Department employees responded with sustained applause. It got even louder moments later after Mukasey took the oath, formally ending the Gonzales chapter in the agency’s history.â€

End of day obtuseness, perhaps but my parsing of EW’s parsing of Redshift’s parsing of the AP article seems to mean that they applauded Bush’s praise for Gonzales knowing that they would be given the opportunity to applaud Mukasey even harder as a sign of their relief that Gonzo is Gonzo. Given that this was a ritual, and the essence of ritual is to be predictable because it repeats earlier ritual, it makes sense that they knew what was coming next. But in the end they still affirmed that praise with sustained applause. IMHO, to make that argument stick, they would have needed to sit on their hands. Hard to do with the big bosses watching, admittedly. But still I have a nagging doubt. Anyone want to put it to rest?

Sorry. That’s both names, not name’s. Same reason as previous comment.

OT, but I thought it telling – An AP article via ArmsControlWonk – Intel Chief Blasts ’Cherry Picked’ Intel:

â€National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell said Tuesday he would resign if administration officials mischaracterized or â€cherry-picked†intelligence to support their own political agenda.

â€If it were cherry-picked in an inappropriate way, then for me, that’s a professional obligation to object, and I would submit my resignation,†McConnell told reporters.â€

Seems that Mikey is of the belief that one can â€cherry-pick†in an appropriate way.

Mad Dogs – So are we to expect McConnell’s resignation tomorrow?

the belief that one can â€cherry-pick†in an approprate way

LOL – that was my exact reaction when I read that far, so I had to laugh out loud when you laid it out MadDodgs.

bmaz How they came to conclude that three of the killings were justified is beyond me. This is pretty much beyond me too. As it comes out, they had already dropped off the person they were supposed to protect. No civilians fired on them. Cars were well back. The Iraqi policeman on the scene was certain enough that the car with the mother and son was not a threat that he had gone towards it when they killed the son, to help the grieving mother – – at least, until they melted her into her son.

All I can tell as a point of differentiation is that the three killings/two incidents involved people who were not actively running away from them at the time they were slaughtered.

Nothing lays out how the â€procedures†of throwing bottles, firing at the ground, etc. were followed prior to commencing the killings.

I also sighed over the quote I saw, from an FBI investigator saying they wouldn’t exactly call it a massacre, but maybe calling it an unwarranted shooting was a little light.

My guess was that he wasn’t from Boston.

settled in the first hour

Send some of that mojo this way, will ya?

My further take on the info from the AP article via ArmsControlWonk – Intel Chief Blasts ’Cherry Picked’ Intel:

â€McConnell also said a new national intelligence estimate on Iran should be complete in about a month, but its key findings will not be released publicly. He says doing so could alert Iran to its intelligence vulnerabilities.â€

Mikey got the word from Deadeye Cheney: â€If you intel types won’t allow us to inappropriately â€cherry-pickâ€, then we’d better keep the Iran NIE classified so the Congress and the public won’t know we’re lying again to go to war. You get my drift Mikey? No talking or you sleep with the fishes.â€

massacre: intentional killing of
a considerable number of human beings
under circumstances of atrocity or cruelty.

Apparently, the FBI guy doesn’t think the shooting passed the â€considerable number†test. In obsolete usage â€massacre†meant murder. Here are some choice words to describe the event the FBI guy might not take issue with.

butchery or carnage: the promiscuous slaughter of
many who can not make resistance, or much resistance

Floyd – I am pretty sure EW knows exactly what exalted esteem we hold her in. The unique and wonderful thing here is that most all of the commenters are passionate wonks as opposed to rah-rah types; we would rather get down to business (and occasionally goof off or delve into sports) than waste time with excessive idolatry. But, nevertheless, I certainly second your feelings.

Neil – There are 17 quite unnecessarily dead roses by any other name. I also was kind of taken aback by the shameless exercise in semantics (among the other previously described substantive grounds).

I delete emails. Doesn’t everybody?

John Lopresti – Not to mention Hatch shepherding in Brett Tolman as USA for Utah. Tolman, the one who surreptitiously slipped in the AG power to appoint USAs (supposedly under Specter’s nose) in the first place.

bmaz, There were some laws not actually laws that Scotus might have a lark parsing, if someone took the time to develop the due process concept for those twelve august individuals. Balkin had an acerbic post at the time of one of the revised appropriations post ipso facto, which was not actually a law either. Some of my notes mention the UT USA, as well, but so far my concerns primarily ranging over the early Bush2 years are in the environment field, the PEER site has volumes about early whistleblower documenting the privatization of forests and lands; plus that truculent discussion of Bloch in 2003 terms. A lot of NGOs halted much of the enterprising open space management Republican style in its tracks, eventually, though I was sad to see the bull dazers making roads across the SanPedro; maybe a wier would be better.

BlueStateRedhead | November 14, 2007 at 17:39

I went back to look but was unable to see what you were referencing. I used to see Jake D’s comments over there and at other places. What did Josh do, just out of curiousity?

Josh banned Jake D but due to the number of different IP’s that the Jake D troll(s) uses the banning is unenforceable.

For persons who abuse a blog to harass others anonymously, that is akin to crank phone calls. The solution? Publish the IP addresses and names of the owners of those IPs. Eventually, a pattern will come out that reveals who the crank is, or the owners will get tired of the complaints and track the person down. That would be particularly interesting if the person is doing it from a workplace.

There is nothing wrong with good, honest, open debate. Doing a drive-by to disrupt what others are trying to express or divert attention is akin to interrupting others.

mark boswell,

well it is plain to see where you mind is.

But back to the subject. Feeney is trying to â€demonstrate good faith.â€

No legal mandate is in evidence, though of course there is always pressure when you have the prosecutors on your case.