Editorial: Tracking the cyber trail

Sunday, April 15, 2007 | 7:25 a.m.

When White House officials communicate with the Republican National Committee, or when they work on the party's behalf, that activity should be performed on their own time and at the expense of the party. Under no circumstance should official government business be conducted using the party apparatus.

But the Bush administration, in its finite wisdom, has managed to do just that and in the process was forced Wednesday to make an embarrassing admission. It was reported by the Associated Press that the White House mishandled Republican Party-sponsored e-mail accounts used by 22 Bush aides, including Karl Rove. The result was the loss of an unknown number of e-mails involving official government business.

That's not all. It turns out that the administration used the Republican e-mail accounts to help plan the firings of eight U.S. attorneys. That revelation provides even more evidence that the ousters, which included Nevada's Daniel Bogden, had more to do with politics than with performance.

Another serious problem with conducting official business through partisan e-mail accounts is that such a tactic could be used to evade the federal law that requires presidential records to be preserved and eventually disclosed, AP reported.

It's no wonder that Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, questioned whether the White House was telling the truth about the missing e-mails. He vowed Thursday to subpoena those documents if the Bush administration doesn't turn them up.

It is hard to believe that these e-mails simply and conveniently disappeared. The White House needs to come clean and make a full accounting of its e-mails before they turn up through other means, such as by subpoena or from sources outside the Bush administration.

The public has lost patience with the propensity of this administration to operate in secrecy and cover up its considerable mistakes. Playing hide-and-seek with e-mails that belong in the public domain only makes matters worse.