All Together Now: “Cover Up!” (Updated) 4

I was going to write about this:

The White House said yesterday that it had mishandled Republican Party-sponsored e-mail accounts used by nearly two dozen presidential aides, resulting in the loss of an undetermined number of e-mail messages concerning official White House business.

Congressional investigators looking into the administration’s firing of eight federal prosecutors already had the nongovernmental e-mail accounts in their sights because some White House aides used them to help plan the U.S. attorneys’ ouster. Democrats were questioning whether the use of the GOP-provided e-mail accounts was proof that the firings were political.

but SpinDentist beat me to it.

(And, remember, this is the same bunch who want unfettered access to everyone else’s emails everything.)

Not that stuff like this hasn’t happened before.

Now, I know a little bit about computers and networks. I spend most of the last eight years at my previous job inside computers. (And, take it from me, it’s pretty cramped in there, especially in those new slim-line laptops.)

It is indeed possible for someone accidently to delete emails off an email client–that is, your computer. It’s also possible to go to your webmail account and delete the email from your mailbox on the server.

But delete them off the mail server so that they are all gone–Poof!–no traces remaining?

Highly unlikely, at least not by accident. Properly maintained, those things are backed up three ways to Sunday.

(Then again, the Current Federal Admistration has “mishandled” everything else.)

All seriousness aside, I smell cover up.

Of course, that would lead one to the conclusion that the minions of the Current Federal Administration might not be entirely truthful.

Gosh. You think?

Addendum, 4/12/2007:

Dan Froomkin.