Blown To Bits

50 Terabytes of Bush Records

Saturday, December 27th, 2008 by Harry Lewis

The New York Times reports that the National Archives is preparing to take ownership of 50 terabytes of Bush data — 50 times as much data as Clinton left behind. And yet important stuff may be missing, because of Vice President ¬†Cheney’s claims that only he can be the arbiter of what records are personal and what are national property. And then there is this comment from the Vice President:

“I’m told researchers like to come and dig through my files, to see if anything interesting turns up,” Mr. Cheney said. “I want to wish them luck, but the files are pretty thin. I learned early on that if you don’t want your memos to get you in trouble some day, just don’t write any.”

And don’t turn over the ones you did write, I guess.

The Archives may be overwhelmed; it seems seriously possible that it will be next to impossible actually to find anything. The digital explosion indeed.

Comments are closed.