As a White House spokesman recently put it, “”I don’t know if Sen. Leahy is also an [information technology] expert, but I can assure you that we are working very hard to make sure that we find the e-mails that were potentially lost and that we are responsive to the requests, if there are responses that need providing, on the U.S. attorneys matters. We’re being very honest and forthcoming.”
Tech-and-politics blogger Carpetblogger (also known as my brother-in-law Mike) has a straightforward reply to this:

Guess what. I am an information technology expert. The White House is full of shit. With the equipment I have on my desk at home I could recover any missing e-mails from their computers.

I am shocked at this unfair implication about our noble and trustworthy White House. Yes, if they had access to an information technology expert, they could no doubt recover the e-mails. But how are they going to find such an expert? Oh, sure, if there were some sort of international electronic communications network that computer experts and ordinary citizens could both use–or if every household in America had a bound printed listing of local business, perhaps printed on high-visibility yellow paper–or if one of the nation’s largest technology corridors happen to be located right outside the Beltway–then we might imagine the White House could find a competent IT guy in seconds. But why indulge in these crazy, sci-fi scenarios? Why can’t you accept that our President and his advisors lie awake at night, consumed with angst at their inability to recover these irretrievably lost (but entirely innocent) e-mails?