WASHINGTON — From Rose Mary Woods’ tape recordings in the Nixon White House to Karl Rove’s e-mails during the Bush administration, congressional investigators and political historians are forever seeking records of White House communications, often against the wishes of the sitting president.
Hoping to boost that effort, the Democratic-controlled House voted Wednesday to impose new rules to preserve e-mails from the White House and other federal agencies, acting in defiance of a Bush administration veto threat.
Titled the Electronic Message Preservation Act, the measure would direct the Archivist of the United States to draw up new rules for preserving electronic records. While passing 286-137 in the House, the bill faces an uncertain fate in the Senate.
The measure was in response to an uproar over e-mails determined to be missing by recent Capitol Hill probes of Bush aides, including Rove, then the president’s chief political strategist. Investigators have tried to determine whether Rove and others used Republican National Committee e-mail accounts to conduct government business in an attempt to circumvent the Presidential Records Act, a post-Watergate law designed to preserve White House records.
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has said that White House e-mails transmitted over several hundred days between 2003 and 2005 also are unaccounted for, an assertion the administration disputes
“Some have said that this bill is about preserving history and it is,” said Committee chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif. “But it also is about our constitutional responsibility for oversight and for holding this and any administration accountable.”
While problems have been acute under the Bush administration, Waxman said, other administrations, including that of former President Clinton, have encountered problems preserving e-mails.
In opposing the measure, the White House said in a statement that the bill would “upset the delicate separation of powers balance” and “require the Archivist to intrude, in an excessive and inappropriate manner, into the activities of an incumbent president and his or her staff.”
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