The virtual age equivalent of the missing 18-1/2 minutes?

A story has been cooking up in the last 24 hours which would have been explosive if the president's name were "Bill Clinton." Apparently there are a bunch of White House e-mails which should have been archived, but weren't.

Patrick Fitzgerald has issued a letter to Scooter Libby's defense attorneys indicating as such, in response to their request for a barrage of documents which seem to indicate a defense built around assassination of Valerie Plame and Joseph Wilson's character than having to do with what their client did or did not do.

The full letter (in PDF format) is here.

In the letter, Fitzgerald reveals, "We advise you that we have learned that not all e-mail 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," but cautions that "no pertinent evidence has been destroyed."

That the destroyed e-mails may not have been of relevance to Libby's case is immaterial. The question is why they were deleted, when a 1994 court case ruled that all such electronic records are to be kept the same way any federal records are to be kept. This issue came up in April 2000, when the same Republicans who are no doubt going to excuse the Bush Administration for this cover-up of whatever they're covering up, investigated the Clinton White House for what they believed to be a cover-up of up to 250,000 missing e-mails.

Once again, Republicans set these rules for retaining White House e-mails. They are in no position to say now that it doesn't matter. And don't tell me 9/11 changed everything, either. I don't want to hear it. They've used that excuse too many times.

Digby has more.