Karl Rove ‘s lawyer said today that Rove did not deliberately delete the five million missing e-mail messages from servers at the White House and at the Republican National Committee. Rove thought the messages were being preserved. Rove’s Lawyer, Robert Ruskin, said it was his own idea that the messages were being preserved in salt and vinegar, like the red peppers in Louisiana hot sauce.
The Bush White House do not want House and Senate investigators to read those e-mails, which will prove that Rove and former White House Counsel Harriet Miers participated in firing the eight US Attorneys. It is the contention of the Republicans that all of the political machinations about the perversion of justice during the Bush years, all took place in secret meetings at the Department of Justice, but without the knowledge of the Attorney General. They contend that the selection of which US Attorneys to keep, and which to fire, did not depend on whether those individuals followed orders from the political people. It is only a coincidence, they are saying, that the US Attorneys who prosecuted weak cases against Democrats in election years, would keep their jobs, and that US Attorneys who followed up real cases of corruption among the friends of George W Bush.
Preserving the evidence is very important to President Bush 43. He preserved the papers relating to his term of office as Governor of Texas, for example. He has them locked up with the papers of his father, President Bush 41, in such a way that no one can look at those papers for 25 years. President Bush has been very careful not to preserve evidence in the manner of President Nixon, whose papers are open for inspection, and whose foolish maintenance of recordings led to impeachment proceedings and resignation.
Robert Ruskin’s announcement today that Karl Rove did not intend to destroy the e-mail messages is reminiscent of the famous 18 minute gap of the Nixon years. In that case, there was a Dictaphone belt – an ancient recording technology that was already obsolete in 1973, when Nixon used it – that had a long conversation about criminal acts. If it had been common knowledge that Nixon had that conversation, it would have been the end of his Presidency, so Nixon personally destroyed the evidence, himself.
In covering this up, Nixon had his secretary, Rose Mary Woods, pose for a photograph showing how she could have made the erasure. The photo is available on many websites, it is one of the best-known photos of the 1970’s. In order to have made the erasure, Woods would have needed to have one foot on the pedal that controlled the Dictaphone belt’s movement, and at the same time, she would have needed to have one hand on the “record†button on the actual machine, about eight feet away. And Woods would have needed to stay in that stretched-out position for eighteen and a half minutes.
We are eagerly awaiting the White House photo of Karl Rove stretched out with his finger on the “delete†key.
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