"Information Officers" Widen Memory Hole

$71 Billion a year spent to forget the past

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned
to repeat it."
- George Santayana, "The Life of Reason," Vol. 1, 1905

Ever heard of the Federal Chief Information Officers
Council?

Most people have not. It's one of those organizations
promulgated by Executive Order (1996), then codified by
Congress into law (2002).

But it's a very, very big deal when you start counting the
zeros and other digits.

Its members spend $71 billion a year on IT, that is,
"information technology."

Anyone who has ever requested information from a government
agency knows all about the "information officer."

He's a guy who is always "away from his desk," whose "voice
mail" box is "full at this time."

I'm sure you remember him. He's the one who "didn't get
your e-mail," is "in a meeting," or "tied up on the phone."

Frustrated, one gets a vision, a cartoonish image straight
out of "The New Yorker" of a dude in shirtsleeves, tie,
slacks and wing tips who has been duct taped to a swivel
chair, a phone taped to the side of his head, and his body
tied to the desk with rope.

That's when it all becomes very, very clear. There is a
very fine line between history and news, news and history.

Either way, it all comes out the same - news being the first
edition of history - and all that jazz.

Or should we make that vaudeville? Remember vaudeville?

Give my regards to Broadway.

According to a Justice Department investigation, former
senior White House officials John Yoo and Jay Bybee wrote
numerous e-mails about the infamous "torture memos."

They advised the Bush Administration that certain
conventions, international laws, and Department of Defense
regulations were just a bunch of hooey, funny little
squiggles, the kind of thing people dream up when there is
no real war on, something to ignore when the chips are down
in an all-out assault on terror.

Investigators concluded that "most of Yoo's e-mail records
had been deleted and were not recoverable."

It's not all that new, this conflict between Freedom of
Information Act proponents, and government officials. In
1989, the private, not-for-profit, 501(c)3 corporation, the
National Security Archives at George Washington University,
thwarted the Reagan Administration from erasing its backup
e-mail tapes by filing a lawsuit.

The archives were founded by a former Washington Post
journalist and staff member of the Watergate Committee.

But it's a controversy that extends across party lines. As
it turns out, not only the Reagan and Bush Administrations
have been the subject of such scrutiny.

The Clinton Administration ran afoul of the same bouts of
dueling word processors in dozens of lawsuits demanding
scrutiny of the e-mail record, that it might not just
disappear into cyberspace.

That's why the Chief Information Officers' Council (CIO)
received this year's "Rosemary Award" for having "a bad case
of attention deficit disorder when it comes to the e-mail
disaster in the federal government," according to Tom
Blanton, director of the National Security Archive.

The award is named in honor of President Nixon's secretary
who inadvertently erased the famous 18 1/2 minutes on the
Watergate tapes by keeping her foot pressed on the
Dictaphone transcription machine while she leaned back and
stretched sideways to answer the phone.

He wrote a book about the lawsuit wars on e-mails of mass
disappearance in the Reagan, Bush and Clinton White Houses.

"We hope this year's Rosemary Award will serve as a wake up
call to the government officials who have the power, the
money and the responsibility to save the e-mail sent in the
course of the public's business."

His lawyers helped straighten out the public's business
recently when they negotiated a settlement with the Obama
Administration to recover "as many as 22 million e-mails
that were previously missing or mis-filed."

According to a recent press release, "several hundred
thousand e-mails survive from the Reagan White House, nearly
a half million from the George H.W. Bush White House, 32
million from the Clinton White House, and an estimated 220
million from the George W. Bush White House."

Past winners of the Rosemary Award?

The FBI. CIA. The Air Force. Alphabet soup. Etc.

Whoop-de-doo.

Are we having fun yet?