The Government Wants to Delete Years of CIA and DHS Emails
On September 17, the National Archives published a seemingly routine announcement in the Federal Registrar. Couched in language about preserving records of value is a line about the destruction of records and a list of federal agencies. The CIA is one of these agencies, and its emails about waterboarding could be some of those records.
The CIA's plan comes in response to an Obama administration directive for all federal agencies to propose better systems for managing their email archives by 2016. The disparate plans, in the National Archive's words, should account for "the destruction, after a specified period, of records lacking administrative, legal, research, or other value."
Most of the agencies listed in the announcement propose deleting emails older than seven years old. The CIA wants to delete the entirety of every employee's email history three years after they leave the agency. Only the emails of the top 22 officials would be preserved. The Department of Homeland Security proposed a similar plan.
