Consistent with industry best practices relating to tape media management for disaster recovery back-up systems, these tapes were recycled prior to October 2003.

To those plaintiffs looking for records of email messages earlier than 2003, Ms. Payton seems to be implying they've been "recycled" -- in other words, they're gone. Or, at least that's the take-away the press seems to be reporting.

Any network engineer knows there's always old hard drives sitting around, spare image copies of things, powered-down servers sitting in a closet gathering dust, and so forth. So while the tapes may have been overwritten, I think there's still the chance the data being sought is out there somewhere.

The plot thickens. More messages might be missing. Or they might not. If you listened to the White House in September, messages are missing. But if you talk to the White House now, there are no messages missing. Confused yet?

Back on September 19, 2007, a White House official showed staffers of the United States House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform a chart, according to a letter (PDF) from Chairman Henry A. Waxman to Counsel to the President Fred F. Fielding:

At this briefing, the White House showed staff a chart indicating that there were 473 days for which various entities in the Executive Office of the President had no archived emails. According to the chart. the davs with no archived emails included:

For the White House Office: December 17, 2003, December 20, 2003, December 21, 2003, January 9, 2004, January 10, 2004, January 11, 2004, January 29, 2004, February 1, 2004, February 2, 2004, February 3, 2004, February 7, 2004, and February 8, 2004.

For the Office of the Vice President: September 12, 2003, October 1, 2003, October 2, 2003, October 3, 2003, October 5, 2003, January 29, 2004, January 30, 2004,January 31, 2004, February 7, 2004, February 8, 2004, February 15, 2005, February 16, 2005, February 17, 2005, May 21, 2005, May 22, 2005, May 23, 2005.

For the Council on Environmental Quality: 8l days, including the entire period between November 1, 2003 through January 1, 2004.

For the Council of Economic Advisers: 103 days, including the entire period between November 2, 2003 through January 11, 2004.

For the Office of Management and Budget: 59 days, including the entire period befween November 1, 2003 through December 9, 2003.

For the U.S. Trade Representative: 73 days, including the entire period between February 11, 2004 through April 18, 2004.

What's making investigators crazy, however, is a White House assertion on Thursday January 17, 2008 by White House Deputy Press Secretary Salvatore Antonio Fratto that "We have absolutely no reason to believe that any emails are missing," a complete contradiction of the September 19th presentation.