The Board, the blog of the NY Times Editorial Board, asks a question: Are there missing White House e-mails or not?  Noting that the Bush administration has provided different answers to that question, The Board explains why it is an important question that needs answer:

The stakes are substantial. White House archives, including messages about sensitive policy discussions, are required by law to be preserved for historians and for possible legal demands. The reported gaps involve 473 days in a 20-month period from 2003 to 2005.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a private watchdog group suing over the administration’s e-mail policies, is questioning in court whether revealing and embarrassing documents may have been destroyed. The White House now insists that there are no missing e-mails. Unfortunately, it says, separate backup tapes, which should also contain the disputed gaps, may have been recycled at a certain point and taped over.

The White House’s rebuff of its own high-level briefing from last fall is hardly the end of the matter. CREW, which is suing over the e-mails, has called on Attorney General Michael Mukasey to appoint a special counsel to investigate. And the House government affairs committee is planning on holding a hearing later this month to try to get to the bottom of the matter.

We suppose that there could be some innocent explanation for all of this, but it has at least a whiff of Watergate. Back then, of course, all that went missing was 18 1/2 minutes of audio tape. Now, it appears to be 10 million e-mails. The Bush administration may have a lot more to hide — or it could simply be a testament to the proliferation of incriminating information in an age of e-mail.