Missing Emails -- Again

The Buffalo News Seems To Us column on Karl Rove's missing emails.

EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN: Americans who were even slightly aware of the news from 1972 to 1974 must have felt an odd tingle this week when the White House revealed that e-mails sought by Congress for investigations into the firings of federal prosecutors were missing. Who can forget the protracted fight over the audiotapes President Nixon secretly made in the Oval Office — or the regret of many supporters that he simply didn’t destroy them.

You don't have to go back to Watergate to find missing White House documents.  Why, it doesn't seem possible does it, but the last administration also had its own email problems.  Remember the Buddhist temple kerfuffle?

The California Buddhist temple that served as the site of a controversial 1996 Clinton-Gore campaign event has been notified that it likely to be indicted, say its lawyers.

Vice President Al Gore attended an April 1996 event at the Hsi Lai Temple in Hacienda Heights that drew considerable attention after it was revealed that donors in attendance were illegally reimbursed by the temple.

Hsi Lai Nuns have already received immunity from prosecution, but the temple itself can be prosecuted for campaign-finance violations.

Gore's story about the event evolved as reporters asked more questions about it. He initially described it as a "community outreach" event, then later acknowledged that he knew beforehand that it was "finance-related."

It evolved from media-ignored kerfuffle to full-blown scandal during the run-up to the 2000 presidential campaign.  And Al Gore's emails from around the time that the sweet nuns had helped him with his campaign  were mysteriously found to have gone missing. 

Despite a year-long effort to restore them, the emails were never found.  Everything old is, indeed, new again, but I feel an odd tingle every time the Buffalo News editorial staff demonstrates mass amnesia over anything that happened in the White House between 1992 and 2000.