The White House email controversy: the final questions

This is it. This is our final article on the White House email controversy (barring any new news from Washington, of course).

As we worked our way through our investigation, we found questions for which we had no answers. Over time, some were answered to a limited extent. For example, our first question asked how many email accounts Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove has. According to his former assistant, he has three.

But those initial questions were really warm-ups, for as we began our investigation, we had no idea where our research would take us. We thought we were looking for some missing email messages and we discovered some severe flaws in how the White House handles email -- flaws that could result in some terrifying national security consequences.

It turns out that the questions about missing email may be more about politics than technology. And, whether we like it or not (and we don't really like it), politicians will be politicians. They always have been, and they always will be.

There are, however, technical issues and concerns, security issues and concerns that blast through the political rhetoric and even party affiliation. We've made a series of formal recommendations for how the operational structure of email management in the White House should change.

Over time, our questions got more strident, as we found ourselves becoming more and more worried about the secure transmission of email. And our questions got more vehement as we found ourselves in almost complete disbelief about what appeared to be monumentally inadequate solutions for real problems.

This series and these questions may be of use, not only to our audience of email professionals, but also to members of Congress and IT staff in the White House. If you're in the later two categories, please, ask these questions. Seek answers. And fix the problems using some of our recommendations.

The final questions

It seems only fitting then, that we began our series with the question "Where have all the emails gone?" and we end this series with the questions that, in the main, remain to be answered.

Question #1: How many accounts in total does Mr. Rove have? Where?

Question #2: What exact server technology is the Executive Office of the President using?

Question #3: What service is being used to transmit Mr. Rove's BlackBerry communications?

Question #4: Does Mr. Rove use more than one BlackBerry?

Question #5: What protocol is used for Mr. Rove's GWB43.COM email access?

Question #6: Why would the RNC run so much critical information through a tiny 12-person ISP in Chattanooga?

Question #7: Does Mr. Rove use Outlook and BlackBerry handhelds for official government business, Republican political business, or both?

Question #8: What email messages are we talking about? Are we talking about email messages sent through the White House EOP.GOV accounts or the messages sent through the RNC-operated GWB43.COM accounts?

Question #9: Is the White House operating a separate archive server or are they relying on each individual user to keep track of his or her email?

Question #10: Are they stoned?

Question #11: What, did they hire FEMA to come up with their email archiving program? Is Mike Brown the new IT czar at the White House?

Question #12: Did the White House make regular backups?

Question #13: What happened to those backups?

Question #14: What happened to the Domino servers and their hard drives?

Question #15: What happened to all the Notes replications?

Question #16: How is it possible so many messages got lost and no one complained during the migration?

Question #17: If a server blew up and all the past messages were lost, and everybody at the White House knew about it and had to deal with it, how come we haven't heard any "war stories" about the day the email died?

Question #18: So, why, in the middle of a war, why did the White House decide to change its email systems?

Question #19: Isn't interrupting such a strategic communications system as email, in the middle of a war, the height of irresponsibility?

Question #20: How could this have happened?

Question #21: What strategic mistakes were made because there wasn't reliable email communications at the White House and in the Executive Office of the President before deciding to invade Iraq?

Question #22: Could a crippled email system have led to some of the strategic mistakes in Iraq?

Question #23: If doing this migration at this time wasn't irresponsibility, what was it?

Question #24: Could there have been any benefit to the administration for migrating right in the middle of the prewar buildup?

Question #25: How many BlackBerry devices did Mr. Rove lose?

Question #26: What sort of information was on each BlackBerry when it was lost?

Question #27: What efforts were taken to recover these missing devices and their potentially classified information?

Question #27: If Ms. Ralston is mistaken about Mr. Rove's ROVE.COM account, could she also be mistaken about other aspects of her testimony?

Question #29: Is Mr. Rove the only one who misplaces these things?

Question #30: Are other key White House staffers losing their communications devices?

Question #31: Just how many times is someone allowed to lose a BlackBerry before being told, "No more"?

Question #32: Has the Hatch Act been used as an excuse to bypass government servers, thereby giving a reasonable-sounding excuse to circumvent the Presidential Records Act and the Federal Records Act?

Question #33: Is IT management at the White House as incomprehensibly unprofessional as it seems -- or is a pretense of cluelessness being used to divert questions of disclosure?

And, finally...

Question #34: Where have all the emails gone?

We may never know. But we do know it's not nearly as simple a question as we thought when we began this process.

One final thought...you know what really freaks me out? We've been looking into a very tiny part of federal government operations and we've discovered some really worrisome stuff. Given how big and complex our government is, what else is hidden behind arcane topics and political bluster, that, if brought to light like we have White House email, would send us screaming into the night?