White House: E-mails on firings may have been killed

The emails were accidentally deleted? Surrre.
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Story Highlights
• Staffers used GOP accounts for official business, White House says
• E-mails from those accounts may have covered U.S. attorney firings
• GOP routinely deleted White House staff e-mail messages on its accounts

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- Some White House staff wrote e-mail messages about official business on Republican Party accounts, and some may have been wrongly deleted, the administration said Wednesday in a disclosure tied to the inquiry into the firing of eight U.S. attorneys.

The White House said it could not rule out the possibility that some official e-mails relating to the firings had been deleted and are lost.

Democrats in Congress have been seeking copies of e-mails from the Republican National Committee as part of an investigation into whether the firing of the prosecutors last year was politically motivated.

"Some official e-mails have potentially been lost and that is a mistake the White House is aggressively working to correct," White House spokesman Scott Stanzel told reporters.

Asked whether some of the lost e-mails could be related to the firings of the U.S. attorneys last year, Stanzel said: "That can't be ruled out."

Democrats reacted with scorn.

"This sounds like the administration's version of the dog ate my homework. I am deeply disturbed that just when this Administration is finally subjected to meaningful oversight, it cannot produce the necessary information," said Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Stanzel said 22 White House officials had been allowed to maintain e-mail addresses through the Republican National Committee. They included President Bush's senior political adviser, Karl Rove, and several of his deputies.

Democrats have been seeking information that might tie Rove to the decision to fire the attorneys.

Some White House aides trying to avoid violating the Hatch Act, which prohibits using government property for certain political activities, may have used the political account to communicate about official White House business, Stanzel said.

Some of those official e-mails may now be lost because the RNC had a policy of deleting e-mails about every 30 days. That policy was changed in 2004 to exclude White House officials, who are required to retain records and correspondence. Everything e-mailed from a White House account is automatically archived, Stanzel said.

The White House admission came as the Democratic-led Congress moved to obtain additional documents from the administration in its investigation of the firing of eight prosecutors, a case that has prompted calls for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to resign.

Gonzales received a subpoena Tuesday from the House Judiciary Committee for documents related to the firings.

The White House said Bush had asked the Justice Department to be "fully responsive" to the request.

Gonzales, who with Bush's public support has rejected calls to resign, is to appear next week before the Senate Judiciary Committee, which plans to authorize subpoenas of its own Thursday for administration documents.