This is pretty amazing. It must take some seriously incompetent IT people to lose 22 million emails (or perhaps an organized cover-up). But now we at least know that it’s possible.

Yesterday, the White House issued a press release letting the public know about the email that have been found. In the press release, Meredith Fuchs, general counsel to the National Security Archive, said “many poor choices were made during the Bush administration and there was little concern about the availability of e-mail records despite the fact that they were contending with regular subpoenas for records and had a legal obligation to preserve their records.”

While the current administration has a lot of incentive blow this up as much as possible, it is still a very serious issue. What makes it even more interesting is that the Bush administration passed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which requires public companies to archive emails. If they fail to comply with these requirements, the management team might have to spend time in prison. Apparently, the White House does not have to comply with these requirements.