Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

Naturally, Fitzgerald is going to try to use the anti-graymail provisions of the Classified Information Procedures Act to stymie Libby's lawyers. Expect delay. But Fitzgerald's case is clear: since Libby is charged with lying rather than with espionage, material that would have been relevant to an espionage case isn't relevant to the case actually before the court. [That should, but probably won't, help silence the people still insisting that if Libby was charged only with lying, Fitzgerald must have concluded that he was innocent of espionage.]

Ya gotta love Fitz. But that's not the interesting part of Libby's fishing expedition. Here's where it gets good.

In a letter from Fitz to Libby's team outlining what they will and won't hand over as part of discovery, he dropped a political bomb.

In an abundance of caution, we advise you that we have learned that not all email of the Office of the Vice President and the Executive Office of the President for certain time periods in 2003 was preserved through the normal archiving process on the White House computer system.

Missing emails from the White House email archives during convenient periods of time during 2003? HHMMMM.

Is this common? Seems not:

"Bottom line: Accidents happen and there could be a benign explanation, but this is highly irregular and invites suspicion," said Steve Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists' government secrecy project.

Our own Georgia10 reminds us of the "12 Hour Gap":

We all know about the 12 hour gap, that twilight zone between the evening of September 23, 2003 (when Gonzales was informed of the order to preserve evidence) and September 24, 2003 (when Gonzales actually gave the order to retain evidence).  But it's not just a 12 hour gap that provided a chance to tamper with the evidence.  It's a two week gap.  Recall that Gonzales and the rest of the White House lawyers screened every communication before handing it over to Fitzgerald. Democrats at the time cried foul:

Double HHMMMM.

Now, through a juicy piece of irony, (nod to Digby) we found out how the White House email system works:

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:

It works like this:

In fact, 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.

(Digby goes on to point out that no emails were discovered missing from the Clinton archives. More pointless Republican ranting.)

No wonder the Preznit doesn't "do email."

So now we have Fitz planting a political bomb in a discovery response letter to Libby's team which pretty much announces that someone (cough*Gonzales*cough) has erased evidence from the White House electronic archiving system.

Damn, I've heard this story before.

Now, didn't the 18 minute gap in the Nixon tapes become, like, a HUGE issue in the Watergate investigation? Wasn't it, like, proof that the administration had something to hide and needed to get rid of the evidence...like, er, their knowledge of and involvement with the burglary/break in and the subsequent coverup?

In so many ways, BushCo. is like the Nixon mess.