The missing e-mails.

Byline: The Register-Guard

Last time we checked, it was still called the Presidential Records Act. Not the Presidential Records Suggestion.

The 1978 law requires the White House to make certain that its actions, decisions and deliberations are "adequately documented" and that all records relating to the performance of presidential duties be preserved.

Yet the Bush administration, in particular political adviser Karl Rove and his foot soldiers, seem to have taken the law's hard and clear requirements, as, well, a list of helpful hints that they're free to ignore.

The White House announced Thursday that it has lost e-mails dealing with official government business, including some relating to the firing of eight federal prosecutors. It also was disclosed that Rove and 21 other White House officials have maintained separate e-mail accounts for government business and for work on political campaigns through the Republican National Committee, raising the very real possibility that the RNC accounts may have been used to sidestep record-keeping requirements.

The missing e-mails - and the existence of the White House's dual electronic communications system - came to light as Congress investigates the firings of U.S. attorneys. But there have been previous indications of the system's existence. RNC e-mail addresses have cropped up in communications between a White House aide and convicted former lobbyist Jack Abramoff and in a message to employees of the General Services Administration recounting a briefing at which a Rove aide reportedly urged GSA employees to help Republican candidates.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, is justified in criticizing the use of "off-book communications." The Vermont Democrat is also right to question the White House's claim that the e-mails have been lost. As anyone who has ever used an office e-mail system is - or should be - aware, e-mail can almost always be retrieved. The White House's claim that the e-mails are suddenly missing is, as Leahy aptly put it, like saying "the dog ate my homework."

The White House insists the loss of e-mails was an "honest mistake" and cites the absence of a policy clearly informing staff about legal requirements that communications be properly archived. It also says staffers may have used the RNC accounts "out of an abundance of caution" to avoid violations of the Hatch Act, the federal law that restricts the political activities of government employees.

It's hard to believe that employees of an administration that has been in office for six years are still fuzzy on their legal obligation to preserve any and all presidential materials. That raises the unsettling possibility that Rove and other White House employees may have used the RNC system to shield their communications - not just on the firing of U.S. attorneys but possibly on a range of other matters - from public scrutiny.

Congress should be unrelenting in its demands that the White House produce copies of all e-mails that deal with the prosecutor firings. Meanwhile, the White House should do whatever is necessary to recover the lost e-mails and provide them to Congress. It also should shut down this and any other system of back-channel communications.

The Presidential Records Act was adopted after the Watergate scandals to ensure rigorous congressional oversight and to make certain that full and complete presidential records are available to future historians. Those records belong to the American public, not the individuals who serve in the Bush administration. Not President Bush. Not Karl Rove. And not any of Rove's e-mailing minions.

It's the law. Not a suggestion.