On March 20th, suppose that I alter the directory name _#%attaboy by removing the % so that it is now called _#attaboy. I’ve removed the % character that was used to HIDE the directory — and hide all the files within that directory.

Exactly.

Is this the field that “SIS” filled?

Suppose I have two directories: attaboy and _#%attaboy. I do a search for all files containing the term… ‘judyjudy‘.

On Mar 1, I might get a list of the following directory and the following files:
attaboy/folder1/judyjudy.doc
attaboy/folder1/pics/judyjudy.jpg

I think that only one judyjudy file exists on that machine.
That is because the % in the directory (or file) prefix of any filename or directory name tells the computer, ‘don’t bug me by showing me these, I want to ignore them for the present. HIDE them.’ But if I remove the % from the _#%attaboy, what will happen?

On March 20th, suppose that I alter the directory name _#%attaboy by removing the % so that it is now called _#attaboy. I’ve removed the % character that was used to HIDE the directory — and hide all the files within that directory.

(”Hiding” is sort of like ‘moving stuff to the back of the closet where I don’t have to deal with it’. As Rayne points out, my ass is covered (legally) because I have not deleted anything. However, ‘hiding files’ saves me time, because I can ignore files and directories that I don’t need to waste time viewing. It also **hugely** reduces the chances that I will accidentally overwrite a file, which is another big advantage of hiding files!)

Now, with the _#attaboy directory “VISIBLE”, I redo the search and now — presto! — look what appears:

attaboy/folder1/judyjudy.doc
attaboy/folder1/pics/judyjudy.jpg
_#attaboy/sleazebots/printreporters/judyjudy.doc
_#attaboy/sleazebots/sleeziest/judyjudy.mov
…

You get the idea.

EW, given that you grew up in an IBM household, I’d assumed you hide files all the time to get ‘em out of your way… Apparently not?

As Rayne points out, ‘hidden files’ would explain why emails were sometimes found; other times, they did not turn up. At least on the (UNIX and Mac OS and Win) systems that I’ve used, files ONLY show up when the files are ‘viewable’.
(Feature; not a bug.)
—————————–

** Addington RE: Ausberger’s (a form of Autism), @ 97, 42, 56, 65, 71 **
I’m in no way qualified to diagnose anyone for anything, so let me point out that I am NOT arguing that Addington has an ‘autism thing going on’. But with that caveat, there are some interesting things that keep cropping up in relation to his name. And they often remind me of some experiences interacting with people diagnosed as autistic.

Like others here, I’ve wondered whether some autistic traits/limitations might help explain the kinds of behavior ascribed to David Addington (little – or ‘flat’ – emotion; very legalistic, very focused on procedures, doesn’t interact with the press/public).

Autistics in general are characterized by an inability to read other people’s emotions. They tend to take things quite literally — allusions, metaphors, similes simply baffle them. (katiejacob can perhaps verify or fine-tune my remarks; Asberger’s is one type of autism, IIRC.)

To anyone who’s never observed autistic kids, it’s worth noting that they don’t play like other kids. (In my experience, they also avoid making eye contact, and if they do make eye contact it is very fleeting.) Most kids will look you in the eye, chat with you, and ‘play’ in novel ways. Most kids will pick up a small note pad and use it as a ‘PDA’ to play Mommy or Daddy. Or they’ll pretend that their shoe is a phone; they’ll hold it up to their ear and chat happily away into the shoelaces, using lots of emotion that mimics what they’ve heard their parents or caregivers say. They’ll hold a ‘tea party’ and feed a nickel (ie, a ‘pretend cookie’) to their teddy bear by putting the nickle up to it’s mouth, then talking to the teddy bear in very emotive language: “Do you LIKE that? Yum! Yummmmy!!”

But not autistic kids. They can be very sweet, and they can have high IQs. (Yes, some autistics go to college.) But I have not observed the autistic kids that I’ve watched ever use a shoe as anything BUT a shoe. For these kids, a shoe is a shoe is a shoe is a shoe is a shoe… A nickel is a nickel; it could never be a ‘cookie’, NOT EVEN for a teddy bear. The kids that I’ve interacted with (and also adults) tend to have ‘flat’ voices, lack animation, and almost always lacking the auditory rhythms in which most kids speak.

It is also now evident that people can fall anywhere along a scale for autism; it’s not a black/white thing. There are degrees of autism. (I think katiejacobs will bear me out?). Research now suggests that autism happens really, really early in the process of infant development during gestation — before the sixth month IIRC. The way the brain forms, and the timing in which the neurological factors that manifest as autism develop, happen in a ‘window’ of time and the earlier in that window they occur, the more severe the autism seems to be. (Anyone interested, here’s a good preliminary link: http://www.sciam.com/article.c…..414B7F0000

I remember reading the Libby Trial Liveblog threads and thinking… “Is it possible that a highly functioning person with ’some autism thing’ going on is actually operating the reins of government….?!” Because — on the face of it — most of us would assume that a ‘mind blind’ person would not be hired as the CoS for a VP. On the other hand, someone who takes things very literally, is very focused, doesn’t ‘goof off’, thinks very rigidly within the box could have a certain sort of…. value?… to an administration that doesn’t like to be questioned.

EWs descriptions of Addington sounded as if his voice was very ‘flat’. Not a lot of emotional limberness. (About what one might expect of someone who is interpreting laws and legal codes with RIGID, very ’surface level’ black/white sterility.) But if Addington is very ‘procedural’ and ‘unemotional’, that’s a red flag.

To assume that someone with autism is ‘not smart’ is erroneous. I actually interacted for an extended period of time with someone who was just… ‘mind blind’. (Absolutely inflexible; interpreted every document and presentation literally. He hated ‘literature’, because he didn’t see anything of interest in it.)

Autistics interpret information — including text! — literally. People who read here are familiar with ‘layers’ of text: there’s a ’surface layer’, and then (depending on the nature of the writing) there are one or more ‘layers’ beneath that surface text.

I’ve actually worked with a few autistics, trying to scope out HOW they read. They read THE SURFACE ONLY. They literally don’t grasp any ‘deeper meanings,’ and if you ask them ‘what’s beneath those words you just read me?’… well, one kid literally picked his book up off the desk and lifted it up so he could LOOK UNDER IT, trying to find what I had surely hidden there as a surprise for him. (katiejacob, perhaps you’ve had plenty of those moments when you really don’t know whether to laugh or cry, so you do some of each?)

If Addington were somewhat autistic (functional, can hold a job, excellent employee, does EXACTLY what he’s asked to do…) then Jeff @ 71 is almost certainly correct in guessing that Addington wouldn’t think to do anything illegal of his own accord. (Think Forrest Gump in the power of Dick Cheney, just to get your head around the notion.)

I’m not making a case that Addington should not be held accountable. I don’t mean that.
But if Addington has any significant degree of autism going on, then it would not surprise me in the slightest if he was told to search for “Judy” and that is EXACTLY what he searched for — Capital J, little u, little d, little y. Nothing more. Nothing less. Because that’s what I’d expect someone with the kind of ‘mind blindness’.

They would no more think to ask, “Well, shouldn’t I also search on Jud*, judy, jude, and any nicknames?” It literally would not occur to them. They don’t think ‘outside the box’ because they don’t even have a clue they’re IN a box! No clue.

IF (and ONLY IF) that kind of super-literalist, procedurally obsessed thought process is Addington’s ‘cognitive style’, then it speaks volumes about the depravity of R.B. Cheney. Someone who takes instructions literally, obsesses on their job, has few social skills and no discernable empathy, is focused on procedures, and views only ’strong patrons’ as legitimate sources of authority would be the perfect Cheney tool.
Whether that describes Addington is still not fully clear to me.

katiejacob, it sounds like you have some heroic parenting under your belt.
The incidence of autism is rising, and researchers would sure like to figure out why.

Virtual data can end up in such places either directly or because that’s where a supplier or sub-supplier maintains its technology, operation or server farm. Or because someone hacked into a data stream that routed through a vulnerable node. (That’s how the US does much of its digital spying.)

China, for example, might not bother hacking a system to learn about GM’s newest engine technology – GM probably already gave it to them to sell a couple of Buicks in Shanghai – but the possibility of discovering internal WH comms would attract every government hacker on the planet.

Which is why the apparent disarray in these arrangements – and the possibility of duplicate, RNC or other “private” repositories for official WH data – is deeply troubling. These are things Congress and the American people should not have to guess about.

SIS has “filled in” the blanks…!?

This is possible by managing per-user refcounts to that specific message which track read/unread and deleted status. A message sent to 100 people who are spread across five message stores/servers would have only five instances.

What is interesting is that messages don’t get marked for deletion in the server message store until all of the addressees in that store/server have deleted the message. Once the message has been “tombstoned” there is a configuration setting that specifies how long to keep the messages before purging from the system (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/324358).

If a single user failed to delete the message on any store and if a backup tape could be found during that period it might be recovered from the server store.

It seems like we have to rely on an system plugged in to the Message Journaling feature in E2K (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/843105/en-us). The challenge here is that once the messages have been journaled they are then copied to PSTs by some external process and open to deliberate redaction.

I’m still not clear on the storage setup for the users in question; were they working with server storage only or server and PST file storage?

~GC

So if I’m not mistaken, in fall 2003, Libby did not leave his email search to the centralized one, while Mayfield did – for the period covering the events of summer 2003 and up to September 30, 2003. Then, in early 2004 both Libby and Mayfield left their email searches to the centralized search, when the subpoenas covered the period including October 2003.

Ok, that does look suspicious, and must have looked like it required an explanation since no one else in OVP seems to have done that.