Those Missing Emails

So, in case you haven't heard, it turns out there might be a few emails that may have been--contrary to White House Policy-- ahem, deleted:

"Fitzgerald, who is fighting Libby's request, said in a letter to Libby's lawyers that many e-mails from Cheney's office at the time of the Plame leak in 2003 have been deleted contrary to White House policy. "

All by itself, the above paragraph was plenty enough to spark lots of discussion around the internets, but then Digby weighed in and it becomes much clearer how sneaky this all is:

These missing Cheney e-mails are very intriguing. This is particularly so because we went though a similar event during the Clinton administration and the Republicans went completely apeshit over it. In 2000, it was revealed (through the machinations of Judicial Watch) that some emails had not been properly archived and it was suspected that some of Monica Lewinsky's had not been turned over as a result. Dan Burton held hearings and the Independent Counsel, Robert Ray, was assigned to look into it.

Judicial Watch ended up filing an ethics complaint against Ray for declining to follow it up but it was clear from the get that it was another bogus witch hunt, as all the Clinton scandals were. But in the course of it we all found out what kind of an archiving system the White House has for maintaining emails:

... whenever a White House staffer clicks "send," a message reminds them that a copy of their missive is being sent to records management. When it comes to saving e-mails, the White House is held to a higher standard than the private sector, and even Congress.
Companies that have a policy of saving e-mails usually do so only for three to six months, according to records-management consultants. Many companies consider them the same as phone calls, and don't archive them unless they are equal in weight to a written communication.

But the White House is different. It saves its records for posterity. After President Clinton vacates his office next January, at least 30 million stored e-mails will be deposited with the National Archives, an unfathomable mountain of data ranging from "how about lunch?" to speech drafts, to perhaps more juicy communications.

So, whatever the case may be, what's clear is that it's not an accident when emails don't get archived. Moreover, it isn't something that's all that easy to do, you have to, you know, go out of your way to do it. It will be interesting to see how they talk their way out of this one. It's easy enough to say you forgot about a conversation you had with someone, or that you were busy at work and just messed up the details of a conversation when talking to prosecutors. But how do you explain deleting emails that are usually archived as a matter of protocol?

And Digby's right:

There can be no complaints from the Republicans about Fitzgerald investigating this. None. The precedent was set just five and half years ago --- by them.