EMAIL ARCHIVE
To: stephanop@whitehouse.g
Subject: POTUS jog at 4
For ex-presidents, there's no shaking the paper trail. Archives of memos related to everything from Watergate to Iran-Contra represent artifacts of the Oval Office, the detritus of official business and classified operations. Starting with the Clinton administration, email will be added to the official mix - housed at the National Archives, which has been hoarding all types of presidential documents since FDR started his own library in 1939.
Oddly enough, none of the 16 million electronic messages generated by the Clinton White House were from the president. Bill simply didn't have an email account, says Sam Watkins, the project manager tasked with handling the email - which will join 76.8 million pages of paper documents. Still, the collection of messages, which are unfiltered and certain to include spam and personal notes, add up to 290 Gbytes, stored on more than 4,000 data tapes. The whole process will cost taxpayers more than $20 million.
But don't expect to see the messages anytime soon. The Presidential Records Act of 1978 mandates a five-year period before John Q. Public can access the archive, and a recent executive order allows more restrictions. The soonest we'll get a peek is 2006.
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