E-Mail Saga Gets Fishier

"Anne Weismann, the chief counsel for the citizens group, said in a telephone interview that many e-mails were lost because the White House did not put in place a system for archiving them after it dropped one that had been used by the Clinton administration.

"'They didn't keep a backup,' Weismann said. 'There was no way to ensure they were not modified or deleted in some way.'"

Kranish also notes: "The fact that e-mails are missing was noted -- but not widely and publicly noticed -- in the perjury trial of Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby.

"In January 2006, prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald sent a letter to Libby's lawyer that noted that 'we have learned that not all of the e-mail 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 of the White House computer system.'"

Perino's Excuse

Here's an innovative excuse from White House spokeswoman Dana Perino yesterday: I can't be held accountable for statements I make when it turns out later on I didn't know what I was talking about.

From yesterday's briefing:

"Q On March 27th at this podium, you said that there were only a handful of White House aides who had these political RNC accounts. Now you're saying 22. That doesn't sound like a handful.

"MS. PERINO: Well, I didn't know how many there were. And I think that, again, if you look at the number of people that work at the White House, almost 2,000, to have 22 people that -- I mean, that's obviously -- I grant you, it's a very large handful, but it's still a relatively small number. . . .

"Q This seems to be -- at least Senator Leahy seems to be suggesting now this is a credibility issue; that the explanations coming out of the White House don't pass some sort of sniff test for him.

"MS. PERINO: I don't know how you could possibly say that when what we have done is endeavor to be very forthcoming and honest in talking about a policy that we've had. Now, it would be different if we hadn't said anything at all. But we didn't. . . .

"Q But what you've said has shifted even over the last couple of weeks.

"MS. PERINO: Give me an example of that.