How Could Rove Not Know Emails Deleted?

14 Apr 2007 // Okay, this is just a question, and it's based on an assumption or two, so take it for what it's worth: Does Karl Rove's claim that he thought the RNC was archiving all his e-mails make sense, given the fact that Rove was investigated in the Valerie Plame affair?

Responding to the recent news that many White House staffers -- including Rove and many of his underlings -- have used RNC e-mail accounts for official government business, and that e-mails on the RNC system prior to 2005 were routinely deleted after 40 days, Rove's lawyer today said:

His [Rove's] understanding starting very, very early in the Administration was that those e-mails were being archived.

I construe that to mean that Rove thought until the last few days that the RNC e-mails were being archived. If that construction is correct, my question is: How come Rove didn't discover the fact that RNC e-mails were routinely deleted when he was being investigated by Patrick Fitzgerald regarding the Valerie Plame affair?

For Rove not to have learned of the RNC deletions during the Fitzgerald investigation, it seems to me that at least one of the following would have to be true:

1. Fitzgerald's investigation somehow did not give Rove cause to go over his e-mails from the relevant portion of 2003.
2. If he did go over his RNC e-mails for 2003, Rove simply didn't notice that they had all been deleted.

Neither of those seems likely to me. Am I missing something?

Perhaps this is why the group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics (CREW) in Washington sent a letter to Fitzgerald today asking him to reopen his investigation into the role that Rove may have played in the Plame affair.