Millions of Emails From Bush Administration Finally Recovered

Twenty-two million missing White House emails from the administration of former president George W. Bush have been recovered, after the administration failed to install an effective electronic record keeping system during its years in office. The President’s office is required by two federal laws to keep track of its communications.

Two advocacy groups, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, and the National Security Archive, sued the Executive Office of the President in 2007 over the emails and are currently settling their lawsuits. Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the Bush administration had previously ignored congressional requests for the emails.

The lack of a proper system has been criticized by some as an anti-transparency effort by the former administration. Records released as a result of the lawsuits show that Bush's White House was aware during his first term in office that the e-mail system had serious archiving problems.

The emails will not be publicly available for years, as they will go through the National Archives' system for evaluating and releasing presidential records.