White House dismantles the Automated Records Management System (ARMS) put in place by Clinton Administration to archive e-mails.

New archiving system, Electronic Communications Records Management System (ECRMS), is proposed as transition to Microsoft Exchange begins. In the interim, EOP institutes process to manually label and archive each component’s Exchange .pst (Personal Storage Table) files every day—which former CIO Carlos Solari called a “temporary” and “short-term situation” for e-mail preservation.

Start date of period of missing e-mails.

A 2005 OCIO staff report (“2005 Report”) documented e-mail archiving irregularities within all EOP components.  The study was performed using two Microsoft Virtual Basic tools, “Findit” and “CMDFI”, and identified a total of 473 days of an approximate 1,000 day period in which one or more EOP components reported zero e-mail. The report also identified 229 days within the same period where one or more components recorded inexplicably low e-mail tallies.

Last day listed in 2005 Report with either zero e-mail (“Red Days"), or suspiciously low e-mail tallies (“Yellow Days”) within the day’s e-mail archive.

ECRMS ready to go live, pending approval of OA director and CIO Payton.

Payton decides to not implement ECRMS, citing concern over the predicted 18-month “ingestion” of backlogged messages (although the ingestion would have been complete by the end of Pres. Bush’s second term,) and the inability for staff to distinguish records subject to the PRA and FRA from political or personal e-mail (despite the fact that OA Counsel had previously approved this aspect of the ECRMS system.)

White House Counsel meets with “key members of NARA’s senior staff” to brief them on e-mail situation. NARA makes its first of several requests for a copy of the 2005 Report detailing missing/low e-mail days, and urges commencement of restoration program.

A week after this meeting, Allen Weinstein, Archivist of United States, sends a letter to White House Counsel Fred Fielding, urging the White House to commence restoration of lost e-mail.

OA receives an opinion from the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) which “provided legal advice to the White House Counsel’s Office regarding OA’s status under FOIA.” On the same day, OA files a motion in CREW’s FOIA lawsuit arguing that the case should be dismissed because it is not an “agency” subject to FOIA. This argument contradicts OA’s history of responding to FOIA requests, filing of annual FOIA reports, and drafting of a FOIA improvement plan. Soon after, OA takes down the FOIA page on its web site.

OA later claims in litigation with CREW that the OLC memo was “not the final decision” and therefore need not be disclosed. The memo remains secret.

The National Security Archive sues White House defendants and NARA, seeking the recovery and preservation of more than 5 million e-mails under the Federal Records Act and the Administrative Procedure Act.

In an internal NARA memo to Archivist Allen Weinstein, NARA General Counsel Gary Stern states that “we still know virtually nothing about the status of the alleged missing White House emails” and “it is vital that any needed backup restoration project begin as soon as possible, in order that it be completed before the end of the Administration.”

Telephone briefing with Oversight Committee Staff and Theresa Payton and Emmett Flood.

Payton says CIO is using newer software tool to analyze e-mails/perform search and has recovered about 100 .pst files with names that do not correspond with their contents.

Telephone briefing with Oversight Committee Staff and Theresa Payton and Emmett Flood reports that 23 million previously uncounted e-mails were discovered.

Staff has “found” e-mail for at least some of the days that 2005 Report indicates had no e-mails preserved. Payton could not specifically quantify how many were found for these days. Some e-mails found for “all of the missing days for the White House Office, the Office of Policy Development, and the Office of Management and Budget. Similarly, some e-mails had been found for 5 of 16 missing days for the Office of the Vice President.” Findings described as “preliminary” and Payton cautions that analysis will not be complete until “sometime in March.”