American presidents' long history of 'losing' records

The press has a short memory. Presidents have had a long history of tapes (and, therefore, emails) being lost.

When I was young, Richard Nixon was president. He taped many of his conversations, and Rose Mary Woods, then his secretary, even gave a demonstration on how she mistakenly erased part of a Nixon tape. She showed everyone how it supposedly happened, and it was dubbed the "Rose Mary stretch." It became the famous 18-minute gap. One high school in Arlington, Virginia (the town right on the cusp of Washington, D.C.), even had its marching band form in the shape of a tape recorder, stopping for a few seconds, as if it were the 18-minute gap.

In 1978, well after the Nixon tape debacle, the Presidential Records Act was passed. Anything that was made or done after Jan. 20, 1981, had to be preserved. That was the day of the presidential inauguration of Ronald Reagan. Records can only be kept private (with some national security exceptions) for up to 12 years. The act not only covers the records of the president but those records of the administration.

In more recent times, there have been more records "lost." Losing a record is the equivalent of not preserving a record, and administrations are famous for doing so. According to Newsweek, somehow the George W. Bush administration managed to lose 22 million emails, although five million emails is the number that is usually cited. They were emails lost despite the Presidential Records Act. Dana Perino said it was most likely due to a technical glitch. What is even more astounding is that the Bush administration used a private server, one that was owned by none other than the Republican National Committee! The email address was from the domain, gwb43.com. Imagine if the Hillary Clinton emails were housed at the Democratic National Committee rather than at her home in Chappaqua, New York. Donald Trump and the press would have had a field day!

Back in 2007, there was a House Oversight Committee, and a report was issued. In 2007, the committee was run by Democrats, and Henry Waxman was the chair. His committee "learned from the RNC that at least 88 White House officials had RNC e-mail accounts. The officials with RNC e-mail accounts include Karl Rove, the president's senior adviser; Andrew Card, the former White House chief of staff; Ken Mehlman, the former White House director of political affairs; and many other officials in the Office of Political Affairs, the Office of Communications and the Office of the Vice President. It also found, "Of the 88 White House officials who received RNC e-mail accounts, the RNC has preserved no e-mails for 51 officials."

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Then in the Clinton administration, Judicial Watch found that White House emails also disappeared. In 2000, before the famous election of Bush and Gore, there was a House Committee investigation. The House was then controlled by Republicans. According to Judicial Watch, "Sheryl Hall, the Clinton White House computer expert who alerted us about this scandal, deserves kudos for bravely coming forward. Also brave was Clinton administration contractor whistleblower, Betty Lambuth, who discovered in 1998 that about 100,000 emails had not been preserved by a back-up system that was designed to store them in a single, searchable database. … All of this led to top Clintonites testifying under oath in federal court and criminal and congressional investigations. But this all seems to have fallen down the memory hole."

During the Obama administration, in 2014, USA Today reported how then-IRS Acting Director of Exempt Organizations Lois Lerner's emails were lost. The paper said, "It was seven hard drive crashes, the lack of a centralized archive, a practice of erasing and reusing backup tapes every six months, and an IRS policy of allowing employees to decide for themselves which e-mails constitute an official agency record."

The story of the 2016 elections is the private server of Hillary Clinton used when she was secretary of state. No one can defend her having a private server, and certainly no one can defend Brian Pagliano, the man who apparently set up her private server, not showing up for a congressional House Oversight Committee hearing last week. He was subpoenaed, and the hearing clearly has a partisan aim; however, you show up when Congress subpoenas you.

This is the "everyone-does-it" defense. It's a poor defense at best. The media are right about Hillary Clinton's private email server. It should not have happened.

However, with Nixon's gap in tape, Bush's lost email records and Lois Lerner's problems with her emails, it has been a constant government problem. Recent presidential administrations have lost emails and communications. It certainly isn't right, and it contributes to people's distrust of government.

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