As you may have read, earlier today the FBI executed search warrants at the Office of the Special Counsel (OSC). The OSC is "an independent federal investigative and prosecutorial agency. Our basic authorities come from three federal statutes, the Civil Service Reform Act, the Whistleblower Protection Act, and the Hatch Act." You can see why the OSC could be a problem for this Administration.

Fortunately, the Bush Administration came up with a solution, putting Scott Bloch in charge of the office. Putting a Bush appointee in charge of the office that's designed to protect the career civil service against being politicized is like putting a lion in charge of protecting baby gazelles.

It's still only in WaPo.com, not the dead-tree verson yet, but it's progress.

Long version is here. Short version--from The Invaluable Froomkin of course, starts thusly:

" * The number of White House officials given RNC [Republican National Committee] e-mail accounts is higher than previously disclosed. In March 2007, White House spokesperson Dana Perino said that only a 'handful of officials' had RNC e-mail accounts. In later statements, her estimate rose to '50 over the course of the administration.' In fact, the Committee has learned from the RNC that at least 88 White House officials had RNC e-mail accounts. The officials with RNC e-mail accounts include Karl Rove, the President's senior advisor; Andrew Card, the former White House Chief of Staff; Ken Mehlman, the former White House Director of Political Affairs; and many other officials in the Office of Political Affairs, the Office of Communications, and the Office of the Vice President.

" * White House officials made extensive use of their RNC e-mail accounts.

Karl had it all set up so nicely. And then GSA's Lurita Doan shits the bed:

Here's the scheme, as revealed over the past month: Rove and his deputies traveled to various agencies throughout the government, lecturing management there about Republicans' political prospects. Which House and Senate members were in trouble? Which Democratic seats were vulnerable? What were the major issues in the election?

But there was a line to be drawn: no commands were to be given -- because such a directive would be a blatant violation of the Hatch Act, which forbids the use of government resources for political ends.

On the contrary, the government officials receiving the briefing were supposed to get the hint -- as Tom Hamburger reported, "employees said they got a not-so-subtle message about helping endangered Republicans." The briefing simply gave them the tools to be helpful in the next election. They were supposed to take the ball and run with it.

This is, exactly and precisely, a strategy of working toward the fuhrer. But then Sweet Lurita has to say what should have been left unsaid:

From the invaluable ThinkProgress today, the latest "offer" from the RNC as to just how much Congressional oversight they will ever so graciously allow Rep. Waxman to perform:

In a new letter to the Republican National Committee, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman writes that the RNC has provided only minimal information regarding White House officials’ use of RNC e-mail accounts. The purpose of Waxman’s inquiry was in part to determine the extent that White House staff used “non-governmental e-mail accounts to conduct official government business.”

In the new letter, Waxman reveals that the RNC’s response thus far has been to propose that any Congressional requests for emails be filtered through “eight search terms, such as ‘political briefing,’ ‘Hatch Act,’ and ‘2008.’”

Is this cute or what? You think the FBI would have caught Al Capone if they were only allowed to use evidence of him speaking or writing the words "bootlegging" and "criminal conspiracy" and "tax evasion"? Set phasers on "hit 'em with the chair," Henry.

And just to do our part I think we, all of us here--that means you too readers!-- should come up with our own list of "eight search terms" that would be most productive in this search.

UPDATE 3: Further Froomkin Fun, Same link as in Update 2 in the category of Credit Where Bloggy Credit is Due. Okay, he missed us [sob] but we'll get over it:

Blogger Josh Marshall writes: "I can say that I am very confident . . . that orders from Pat Fitzgerald were the reason for the change in White House policy in 2004. So the change in policy was tied to yet another criminal investigation of the White House. And the White House and the key employees in question -- namely Karl Rove and people working for him at the White House political office -- were specifically on notice not to destroy the emails they sent through the RNC servers. And yet they took affirmative steps to continue destroying them, even after all of this had happened."

It was in October 2004 that Rove suddenly turned over to Fitzgerald a July 2003 e-mail sent to then-deputy national security adviser Stephen Hadley, that clearly showed that Rove had spoken to then-Time magazine reporter Cooper. In subsequent testimony, Rove says he had forgotten the conversation, in which he revealed Plames identity, but remembered it after his lawyers found that e-mail.

Michael Isikoff wrote in Newsweek in October 2005: "Why didn't the Rove e-mail surface earlier? [Rove's] lawyer says it's because an electronic search conducted by the White House missed it because the right 'search words' weren't used. (The White House and Fitzgerald both declined to comment.)"

You've got to wonder which e-mail account Rove used for that e-mail -- and how it was discovered.

And Glenn Greenwald blogs for Salon about the multitude of examples of the Bush administration's "terrible luck with finding documents."

UPDATE 2: Froom Fingers Fishy Finagling. Noting the "dog ate our emails" excuse for Rover...er I mean "Rove" and Rove alone, the best journalist at WaPo notes that Waxman is So Wise in the Ways of (Computer) Science:

These new, largely unexplained revelations were included in an extraordinary series of letters that Waxman, the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, sent to 17 government agencies yesterday demanding that they preserve any e-mails received from or sent to non-governmental e-mail accounts used by White House staffers.

So Rove's end of the emails may be swept out, eh? Well, every mail has two ends at very minimum. Chop-block the recipients. It's like gathering the shotgun pellets after they've been fired rather than while they're still in the shell...but cops do this every damn day of the week. E-cops too. Go read the whole thing. [WaPo link changed to single-page version rather than their split-into-five-jumps-just-to-cheeze-out-extra-page-hits (or maybe discourage readership of material embarassing to their other staffers?) version.]

UPDATE: Document dump, as in the documents themselves, is now up at the House Judiciary Committee website. Document Dump Discussion, comparison, analysis, etc., is already in progress over at Talking Points Memo. That's fast-moving so get there early (like now). This is live, realtime and messy so don't jump to any "OMG!!" moments until you've read downthread and, preferably, consulted the original to see if it says what the poster says it says. Once burned, ya know.

*****

The parallel stories of Karl's Missing Emails--the ones going through Republican National Committee channels which we will refer to as the ".com" ones, as well as the newly-discovered-to-be-(oops!)-"missing" from government files, hereafter called the ".gov" scandal--continues apace. This post will be today's contribution to the effort to herd the Known Facts, the Unknown Facts, the Facts We Don't Know We Don't Know, well you get the point, into one place for convenience of readers.

There may be too much detail for some who have been following this right along. Sorry. There may be too little, particularly in links or supporting documentation, for those who are just hearing about this for the first time and still at the "WTF is the deal with this email shit?" stage. Sorry. We will endeavor to be clear on our sources, with links to reputable outlets who themselves cite sources where possible.

In some cases there will be quotations for which attribution cannot be supplied because they are unable to speak on the record for legal or other reasons. Use whatever standards you usually apply in judging the veracity of these, or else the common sense God gave a goat as my grandmother used to say.

This will be added on to as the day goes on. Some posts may not seem directly related to the topic but mostly likely will as you read along, such as for instance this NYT: Bush Threatens a Veto Over Intel Bill from early this morning. It's relevant, trust me.