On January 19, 1989, the last day of the Reagan Administration, a federal court in Washington, D.C. granted a temporary restraining order to preserve a collection of PROFS backup tapes from the National Security Council (NSC) and EOP's Office of Administr

On January 19, 1989, the last day of the Reagan Administration, a federal court in Washington, D.C. granted a temporary restraining order to preserve a collection of PROFS backup tapes from the National Security Council (NSC) and EOP's Office of Administration, in a lawsuit brought by several individuals and nonprofit associations captioned Armstrong v. Bush and filed as a Federal Records Act (and Freedom of Information Act) challenge. The PROFS tapes contained, among other things, electronic mail messages of Oliver North concerning the Iran-Contra affair, transmitted over the NSC's internal e-mail system. [Citing Armstrong v. Bush, 721 F. Supp. 343, 345 n.1 (D.D.C. 1989).] . . . On January 6, 1993, as amended on January 11, Judge Charles R. Richey issued an injunction against the EOP (including the NSC), holding that based on the characteristics of the proprietary e-mail systems in place within the EOP and NSC at the time, the defendants' written records policies directing that hard copies of e-mail messages be printed out as the sole means of preserving e-mail records was arbitrary, capricious and contrary to the U.S. federal records laws. [Note: Armstrong v. Executive Office of the President, 810 F. Supp. 335 (D.D.C. 1993).] This holding was affirmed on later appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. [Note: See Armstrong v. Executive Office of the President, 1 F.3d 1274 (D.C. Cir. 1993). On January 15, 1993, the government's emergency motion for a partial stay of the district court's Order was granted by the U.S. Court of Appeals, allowing EOP components to delete e-mail messages from their live operating systems, so long as all record information was preserved in identical form on backup tapes. Order of January 15, 1993, Civ. No. 93-5002 (D.C. Cir.). ]