On March 6, 2007, a grand jury convicted former vice presidential chief of staff Lewis "Scooter" Libby on four of five counts of perjury, obstruction of justice and making false statements to the FBI. Since then, several court documents have been made public including letters from prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald to the Libby defense team. In one letter Fitzgerald notes his concerns about numerous 2003 emails that had disappeared from White House computer archives. The letter states:

"… In an abundance of caution, we advise you that we have learned that not all email of the Office of 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."

Fitzgerald was definitely on to something. How big? Perhaps at the time he may not have known. But what is now clear is that there are an untold number of emails missing from the White House. According to CREW, as many as five million. And then there are Karl Rove’s missing emails from the Republican National Committee server, an account that was said to contain 95-percent of his emails.

And while those emails may never surface, the White House and Karl Rove may find themselves in violation of the Presidential Records Act.

It’s no secret that President Bush has consistently attempted to weaken the Presidential Records Act (PRA), which was intended to open presidential documents to the public after a period of no more than 12 years. It was passed in 1978, after Watergate, "to underscore the fact that presidential records belong to the American people, not to the president," notes Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA). But after 2001, Bush issued a decree that now allows "former presidents and their heirs to bar the release of documents for almost any reason." He has promised to veto any attempt to return to the bill’s original intent. Recent revelations in the Bush Administration’s firings of eight U.S. attorneys shed new light on another way the White House has been deliberately evading the PRA – by using political, non-government e-mail addresses to correspond to one another. Since the White House system automatically keeps records of all-emails, Bush Administration officials – including Karl Rove – are using accounts provided by the RNC and the Bush-Cheney ’04 campaign to dodge public oversight. Unfortunately, after Waxman notified these groups to begin preserving all e-mails by and from White House officials, administration staffers started looking for new ways to hide presidential records from public scrutiny.

AVOIDING_OVERSIGHT@GWB43.COM: The easiest way to reach a White House official may not be through a White House e-mail address. Karl Rove does almost all of his e-mailing using his RNC-based account. Many other aides in the Political Affairs office "use the RNC account as an alternative to their official government e-mail addresses to help keep their official and political duties separate." Susan Ralston, Rove’s former assistant, used not only an RNC account, but also accounts at george.bush.com and aol.com to communicate White House information with lobbyist jack Abramoff. At one point, an Abramoff aide noted that Ralson told him to e-mail her at her political account because "it is better to not put this tuff in writing in (the White House) … email system because it might actually limit what they can do to help us, especially since there could be lawsuits, etc." E-mails show that Rove’s deputy, J. Scott Jennings, used a political email address – Sjennings@gwb43.com – to help orchestrate the prosecutor purge. Even former President George H. W. bush said his son, the current president spurns e-mailing because the records could be subpoenaed. But the White House e-mail system has been crafted to comply with the PRA. It "automatically copies all messages created by staff and sends them to the White House Office of Records Management for archiving." By avoiding the White House e-mail system, the Bush Administration has raised serious questions about "whether it is taking all necessary steps to maintain presidential records to provide a full accounting of all activities" during Bush’s tenure.

COMMUNICATING THROUGH TEXTING: On Monday, March 26, 2007, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman wrote to the RNC and the Bush-Cheney ’04 Campaign and directed them to preserve all e-mails by and for White House officials because they "may be relevant to multiple congressional investigations." Waxman also requested that they meet with the committee about the legal issues involved in conducting official government business using partisan e-mail accounts. But since receiving those letters, White House officials have decided that more evasion – rather than more transparency – is now necessary. U.S. News reports that some aides "have subsequently bought their own private e-mail system through a cellular phone or blackberry server. When asked how he communicated, one aide pulled out a new personal cell phone and said, ‘texting.'"