Issa eyes Google in investigating White House e-mail abuses

While a spokesman claimed the breaches were isolated incidents a Daily Caller investigation revealed a cavalier attitude at the Obama White House toward longstanding safeguards designed to prevent abuses of the Presidential Records Act and other laws.

White House sources described a clash when Obama took the White House between a technology-savvy campaign culture and strict rules in the White House designed to protect the Presidential Records Act and other laws.

“A lot of new people came in [and] they were very hostile towards the career employees,” a White House source told TheDC. “Basically, you know, whenever they made a technical decision, maybe something related to some of the safeguards we had in place for presidential records, as an example, well somebody who was career might say, ‘This is sort of how we’ve been doing things,’ and the political would say, ‘Well, new game in town,’ sort of thing.”

Additionally, two sources said a top White House technology official, Chief Information Officer Brook Colangelo, routinely asked technology vendors for special deals based on his position as a public official.

“I heard the CIO talking to various technology vendors, saying … like, ‘You should give this to us for free because we’re the White House.’ And he actually said that to people,” one source said. A second source said Colangelo continued the practice even after having been confronted about its appropriateness.

Inside the White House, the use of personal iPhones and Blackberries is ubiquitous. Those personal phones could be used for legitimately private purposes such as letting a spouse know when one is coming home.

But evidence is mounting that top White House officials have been using their phones as a convenient way to e-mail lobbyists and others about policy issues – e-mails that should be preserved for the historical record under the Presidential Records Act and Federal Records Act.

The problems are compounded by the claims on ethics and transparency Obama has made. As watchdog group Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington noted in a letter to Towns, “Upon entering office, President Obama promised an unprecedented level of transparency and accountability in his administration.”