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John Roberts: The Missing Years

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from: Timothy Noah

Posted Thursday, May 11, 2006, at 7:17 PM ET

That turns out not to be true. The Web site The Memory Hole (www.thememoryhole.org) has now posted a report from the National Archives' inspector general, vast portions of which have been blacked out prior to its public release. The report clearly states that the White House visitors were allowed to bring personal items into the room where they examined the documents, and further were left alone whenever they needed to talk to the White House about what they were finding. One of these Bush White House employees, the report says, was the last known person to see the missing file. But the Bushies deny they pinched it.

If this all sounds a little familiar, that's because a year ago Sandy Berger, Bill Clinton's national security advisor, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of removing and destroying documents (about the Clinton administration's response to terrorist threats in 2000) from the National Archives. In that instance, the material was classified. Berger ended up paying a $50,000 fine. There's reason to suspect that history repeated itself with the Roberts file, but the Bush administration, which took great delight in exposing Berger's malfeasance, won't let us know who the possible lightfingers were. To read footnotes to the excerpts from the inspector general's report (below and on three successive pages), roll your mouse over the passages highlighted in yellow. To read the document in its entirety, click here.

If you have a document you'd like to suggest for this column, please e-mail me at documents@slate.com . Please indicate whether you'd like to be mentioned by name.

Throughout this document, the names of the Bush administration officials suspected of removing the Roberts file are redacted. According to the inspector general's semi-annual report to Congress (Sept. 2005), they were "a White House employee and two assistants." In all likelihood all three worked for the White House counsel's office.
hot document
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from: Timothy Noah

Posted Thursday, May 11, 2006, at 7:17 PM ET
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Timothy Noah is a senior writer at Slate.
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