Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, January 16, 1993 TAG: 9301160189
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-12 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
WHITE HOUSE MUST SAVE RECORDS
In the latest salvo between the White House and the federal courts over preservation of computerized government records, an appellate panel told the White House Friday that it cannot destroy the information unless it first makes backup copies.The White House had no comment on the ruling, but earlier, President Bush's press secretary, Marlin Fitzwater, said "we have not destroyed any tapes and we don't intend to."
At the heart of the dispute is an effort by White House officials to destroy the in-house notes and memoranda written on computers and dispatched electronically to other staff members during the four years of the administration. Much of the evidence that was found in the Iran-Contra investigation came from a review of such computer files compiled in the Ronald Reagan White House.
In seeking permission to destroy the records, including those of the National Security Council staff, the White House had argued that the computerized memoranda and other electronically recorded documents should be erased to give the incoming Clinton White House a "clean slate" and not "disrupt the orderly transition of power" by handing to the new team an overloaded computer system.
That argument was rejected Thursday by U.S. District Court Charles Richey, and the White House appealed his ruling Friday to a three-judge panel in the U.S. Appeals Court, headed by Chief Judge Abner Mikva.
Only partially overturning the lower court's prohibition on the destruction of material that may be stored on the personal computers in the White House, the appellate court said: "Defendants may remove, delete, or alter such information as they see fit, so long as the information is preserved in identical form, pending the disposition of this appeal."
Last week Richey ordered that the White House and the archivist of the United States take steps to make sure that these so-called non-presidential records are preserved.