However, when a message is transmitted by email, it's an ephemeral thing, existing only in flipped bits that pass from client to server to client. Sure, the message could be stored at any point along the way, but the default behavior is generally to avoid preservation, simply to keep the disk storage load low. If a message doesn't exist any more, it's not necessarily because someone took a specific action to destroy it. Rather, it's likely that someone did not take a specific action to preserve it.

In an earlier article, we talked about the security risk inherent in having someone like Mr. Rove send email correspondence via an outside service, like that run by SMARTech, a small Chattanooga ISP. The following statement from the Committee's report gives us some additional quantification:

Mr. Rove and six other White House officials -- Mike Britt, Jonathan Felts, Korinne Kubenna, Mindy McLaughlin, Cliff Rosenberger, and Nick Sinatra -- all averaged more than 100 emails sent or received each weekday that their accounts were active. In 2007, Mr. Rove frequently sent more than 100 emails per day through his RNC email account and received more than 200 per day.

If we were to calculate out Mr. Rove's use across six years, he received 438,000 and sent 219,000 messages. As we discussed in "The White House email controversy: the nightmare scenario", these were all sent via the general Internet and were likely all completely open for anyone to intercept.

You can begin to see more of the security risk involved when you look at how unsecured RNC accounts were used to send mail to more secure .GOV accounts. Here's what the report had to say:

The Committee asked the RNC to provide data on how many emails each White House official sent to or received from official ".gov" email accounts. According to the information from the RNC, virtually all of the 37 White House officials used their RNC accounts to communicate with government officials with official ".gov" email accounts. Of the 674,367 emails preserved by the RNC, 240,922 emails (36%) were sent to or received from government email accounts. Four White House officials -- Karl Rove, Jason Huntsberry, Melissa Danforth, and Emily Willeford -- conducted more than half of their communications on their RNC accounts with government officials who were using official ".gov" accounts. Mr. Rove alone sent or received 75,374 ".gov" emails using his RNC email account.

Introducing Susan Ralston
The Oversight Committee took the deposition of Susan Ralston, Mr. Rove's former executive assistant, on May 10, 2007. Ms. Ralston was the star witness in this investigation and is cited 35 times in the 16-page report. Prior to working for Mr. Rove, Ms. Ralston was the Assistant Director of Governmental Affairs at Greenberg Traurig.

Her testimony (PDF) was key to the Oversight Committee's report. And it was in the pages of this testimony that we discovered Mr. Rove's proclivity for losing BlackBerry devices.