Montrose - Daily Press

There’s a little-known bill winding its way through Congress that would strengthen the power of the National Archives to require the White House and other executive branch agencies to preserve all electronic records. The national archivist would establish better procedures to check and certify that electronic data systems are indeed operating.

Like much in Washington, what prompted this action was a reaction.

Congressional investigators discovered that National Archive officials backed off from inspections of e-mail messages during the Bush administration. Missing were daily schedules of the president and vice-president and messages from top Bush appointees who used private Republican Party e-mail accounts to conduct public business. Curiously, emails and schedules from the run-up to the Iraqi War —  a war that has featured manipulated intelligence — are missing. Missing also is the outing of former CIA agent Valerie Plame and the decision to destroy interrogation tapes of Guantanamo detainees.

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Warts and all have turned up in presidential libraries. In recent administrations: LBJ’s manipulations of getting the U.S. involved more deeply into the Vietnam War; Nixon’s Watergate undoing and Clinton’s Oval Office peccadilloes. This is history, American history, and Congress must act to protect it before more of it ends up missing.

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