White House Fesses Up to Missing Data - Page 2

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The effort by the plaintiffs, who have the opportunity to respond to this week's filing, faces still further obstacles.

In late April Judge John Facciola ordered the EOP to determine the cost for using forensic technology to recover potentially deleted e-mail.

Facciola also ordered the EOP to provide data on how many current EOP employees were present during the stipulated time frame, and how many hard drives in use today were used in that period.

The court also recommended a search of current and older workstations and Microsoft Outlook .PST files for e-mails linked to individuals employed during the 2003 time frame. It also suggested that EOP employees relinquish backup media that contain e-mails sent or received during the time frame.

But in filings before the U.S. District Court for Washington, D.C. late yesterday, DOJ lawyers fired back at the court's recommendations.

In its filing, the DOJ reiterated the Administration's claim that retrieving lost e-mails -- by searching workstations and Microsoft Exchange files for messages tied to individuals employed during the March 2003-October 2005 time frame -- would prove unworkable.

DOJ officials said that following its recommendations would impose "significant burdens" on the EOP and hinder "effective service."

Additionally, Payton said in her deposition yesterday that the EOP's Office of Administration (OA) "has not historically tracked hard drive information regarding assignment to individuals" -- making any effort to recover employees' old data even more doubtful.

Payton stated in her declaration, which came in response to the court order, that the OA was successful in identifying 545 workstations that that may have been in use during the time frame.

However, she added that the OA can't determine if current hard drives were in use during that time, and that making such a determination would be "extremely costly" and place both time and cost burdens on OA staff.

The EOP cited similar concerns earlier, in response to a court order from March that instructed the EOP to stipulate why it could not conduct forensic copying technologies to preserve e-mail files during the litigation process.

The White House responded that such an effort would prove too costly and labor-intensive.