"Out of an abundance of caution they used their RNC accounts to do official business?"

[Emit]

Question asked in response to Perino's explanation as to why the RNC accounts were used to do official business, from the WH Press Briefing with Dana Perino today:

Q I just want to go back one more time. You've talked about not finding any indication of wrongful intent. But there were employees who used their RNC accounts for official government business, isn't that what you were --

MS. PERINO: I think that there were probably instances of that, but I think that was probably either out of an abundance of caution, or because of convenience. As I said, you're managing multiple email accounts, and plus we live in a world where we work 24/7. And I think that, again, there was no willful intention, but that there is a possibility that because you're using multiple accounts and trying to juggle that, that that was a problem. That's why we're working to fix it.

Q Out of an abundance of caution they used their RNC accounts to do official business?

MS. PERINO: Well, I think that when people have -- I think there are gray areas -- when they feel that there was a gray area that possibly they erred on the wrong side of it. I haven't seen copies of these emails, where they would -- where these were described.

Q Can you talk about what gray area would be?

Q It wasn't discussing the firing of federal prosecutors? That clearly is official business, is it not?

Q Or is it politics?

MS. PERINO: Well, I guess that is one of the questions that's before us in the U.S. attorney matter. I'm going to decline to comment on that specific question. Let me take it back to the Counsel's Office and see what I can say.

Also, notice the use of the word "intentional" -- Perino mentions it about 9 times:

"...we don't know of anybody that actually was doing that, to my knowledge, and we do not have any indication that there was any basis to conclude that there was any wrongdoing, intentional wrongdoing in the use of the RNC emails..."

"...But, again, I would stress to you that we have seen no basis to conclude that there was any intentional wrongdoing with the use of these emails..."


"...And in talking with them and with the Counsel's Office, there is no indication that anyone who is working on a server or in terms of technical capability that would be able to look at a server, clean up a server, or, in terms of when we converted from Lotus Notes to Microsoft Outlook if there would have been any potential loss there, that there was any intentional loss of any document..."

"...But I also will tell you that the technical folks that we've spoken to in the preliminary discussions was that if there had been an inadvertent human error or a technical problem where there were days where emails might have been misplaced, that either, one -- well, one, it wouldn't have been intentional; and, two, there are ways that we can try to gather those if need be..."

"...And what I'm saying is, we're looking into that. But I would caution people from making any broad conclusions about that, for the reasons I've stated -- which is, there's no indication that that would have been intentional, and there are ways that you can find missing emails..."

"...Again, I think it was more -- I don't think it was intentional, and there's no indication that there was anything improper or improper use of these RNC emails..."

"...I think the way to describe it would be that there's no indication that anyone was intentionally not following the policy. I think that the policy wasn't very clear, and that people needed a clearer policy. And especially because technology changed pretty rapidly. I think people at the White House -- and I don't know about you all -- but we didn't have access to BlackBerrys until well after -- right around after September 11th. And then at that point, it was only a very few people. And now it's much more widespread..."

"...I don't know of anyone that violated the Hatch Act or would have intentionally violated the Hatch Act..."

"... I'll decline to talk about the internal review that we have that is ongoing, but I feel pretty confident in the source that I talked to that we are able to say that there is no basis to say that anyone was improperly and intentionally misusing one of the accounts that they were provided to avoid violating the Hatch Act. There's just no -- there's no indication of that..."

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/04/20070413-6.html

[Gabi Hayes]

1. well, Dana, you're in the spotlight now, aren't you? got what you wanted, didn't you?

you're a STAR!

enjoy it

does the name Ron Ziegler ring a bell?

this is going to be FUN!

[49jim]

2. Dana, watch what you say..........

you could end up like Scotty........

[MichiganVote]

3. So much for state secrets.....leak, leak, leak,leak,leak,leak

[Emit]

4. I still can't get over this lame ass excuse

and this bs she spews.

And she says, "And there are ways that you can retrieve any emails that are potentially lost..." and that they've got "forensic consultants who could tell us the best way to do that, the best way to retrieve those..." working on the matter?

My head spins.