The post-Watergate law requiring the preservation of presidential records has proved to be no match for the Bush White House’s stealthy use of back-channel e-mails via the Republican National Committee’s computer system. Congressional investigators have discovered that while 88 White House staffers had accounts over at the G.O.P. computer banks, there are no e-mail archives to be found for 51 of them.
Congress has demanded that the White House and the R.N.C. provide the full e-records as it tries to figure out the story of the political purge of United States attorneys. Claims by the White House and the R.N.C. that they’re trying their best to comply are increasingly hard to believe, and we strongly urge Congress to continue the search.
It’s no comfort — but plenty ironic — that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, in his former role as White House counsel, was the one who ordered staffers to use only government e-mail for official communications and to retain any official e-mails they received on nongovernment accounts.
Smoking C-drive or not, the nation must ask what made this veiled communication system so necessary for a presidential cadre that’s supposed to be working for and documenting its labors for the people, not the Grand Old Party. Karl Rove, the president’s political guru, was the virtuoso at the e-mail Wurlitzer. Five years of his traffic was found, with more than 140,000 of his allegedly nonofficial messages coming and going.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/20/opinion/20wed2.html?_r=1&oref=slogin