David: What other questions should be answered about this and what other assumptions, conclusions, or technical observations can be made about White House staff use of BlackBerrys?

Gary: Generally speaking, files don't get "deleted" without there being some form of retrieval. Weren't there any backups of their mail servers at all? There are many hard disk forensic tools that allow for the retrieval and analysis of "deleted files." I'm surprised that this process wasn't started immediately after discovering "emails were deleted."

What we learned from Gary
Our discussion with Gary helped us understand more about BlackBerry usage, but left some doors open. For example, we now know it's possible that some email traffic to and from Mr. Rove's BlackBerry could have traveled through the Executive Office of the President servers and others, to and from the same BlackBerry, could have traveled through RNC servers located at SMARTech Corporation.

We know that over-the-air email transmission is encrypted, so at least messages going to and from the RIM network to Mr. Rove's BlackBerry are reasonably secure. But that doesn't say much for where mail goes after it leaves the RIM network. And it doesn't say much about Mr. Rove's Outlook email client usage.

And it's this aspect of the whole discussion that worries me most.

An abundance of caution
On April 13, 2007, Deputy Press Secretary Dana Perino held a Press Briefing in addition to the "Gaggle" that we cited earlier. In that briefing, she implied that members of the White House staff, including Mr. Rove, used their GWB43.COM Republican National Committee accounts to do official business:

MS. PERINO: I think that there were probably instances of that, but I think that was probably either out of an abundance of caution, or because of convenience. As I said, you're managing multiple email accounts, and plus we live in a world where we work 24/7. And I think that, again, there was no willful intention, but that there is a possibility that because you're using multiple accounts and trying to juggle that, that that was a problem. That's why we're working to fix it.

Q Out of an abundance of caution they used their RNC accounts to do official business?

MS. PERINO: Well, I think that when people have -- I think there are gray areas -- when they feel that there was a gray area that possibly they erred on the wrong side of it. I haven't seen copies of these emails, where they would -- where these were described.

From the perspective of abiding by the terms of the Hatch Act, this abundance of caution actually makes sense. In a similar situation, I might do the same thing.

Unfortunately, in an attempt to comply with the law, this abundance of caution may have created a considerable national security risk.

Tracing the path of a political email
Again, let me be clear we're making all sorts of educated guesses here. We don't have detailed information to be sure this is what is actually happening. But what I'm about to discuss is, in general, how email works.