The Dog Ate My E-Mails pt.2

Ok this story keeps on giving:

According to an organization called CREW [Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington] the White House may have “lost” more than the e-mails they ‘fessed up to today. It turns out that during the Plamegate investigations the Special Prosecutor ran into trouble trying to get at the facts in part because huge swathes of White House e-mails dating from between 2003 and 2005 have been “lost”. The Prosecutor duly informed the White House who were then supposed to make sure they “recovered” the files and, obviously make sure that such a thing should not happen again.

Whoops!

So here we have a White House claiming that it lost some files after it has been specifically told it has a problem and has been given a remedy. Given that they must have been sensitized to the issue it strains crdeulity for them to say the losses continued subsequent to 2005. That’s either blatant incompetence or it’s a lie. Probably both.

Are these folks really that stupid? They have already admitted to losing national archive material [Presidential and White House communications]; some of them have said they just erased it; others are now saying they “lost” it. Is there anyone in there who is even vaguely competetent? Anyone who is not so unethical that they would not trash material protected by the law? Did they not realize that there are laws dictating the preservation of government communication?

And whose bright idea was it to use Republican National Committee e-mail accounts, run over open, minimally secure, public networks to conduct government business?

Please! This stinks, and the smell keeps getting worse. No wonder Leahy is getting so agitated. At the beginning of this scandal I thought it was going to be fun, a sidebar while we tried to get on with bigger issues [Iraq war anyone?]; but now it seems that the floodgates to a major scandal are breaking down. Bush himself must be getting worried.

Oversight is such a pain for a guy like George. That doubles the fun doesn’t it?

Addendum:

Late this afternoon we find out that the RNC did start preserving e-mails, it’s just that Karl Rove kept erasing them. As I said this is getting bigger by the hour!