The case of the missing White House e-mails

Washington was abuzz last week with the revelation that White House officials and aides have been using a to communicate.

The idea was to avoid using taxpayer-financed systems to discuss political projects, but some of the president's critics have charged that it was a way to avoid keeping records of possibly damaging communications.

Now it turns out that an undetermined number of those e-mails have been lost, the Associated Press reported.

A spokesman told the AP that he could not say what had been lost and that the White House is working to recover as many e-mails as they can. The White House has shut off employees' ability to delete e-mails on the separate accounts, and is briefing staffers on how to better make determinations about when--and when not--to use them, the AP said.

Critics did not seem to buying the explanation that the deletions were accidental.

Blog community response:

"The FBI's computer forensics teams can recover them. I've got clients in prison who can attest to that. It does not require the FBI--any competent computer forensics person with access to the server can recover them, or at least most of them."
--TalkLeft

"High school English teachers have been on to this kind of excuse for the better part of a decade now. Does the White House seriously think we're going to buy this?"
--Kevin Drum

"I see, the Bush administration is the first 'to operate in the era of instant communications.' That explains everything. Apparently email was invented in 2001. Who knew?"
--Anonymous Liberal