Destruction of evidence

At the excellent firedoglake blog, attorney Reddhedd has a very informative post about the newest round of obstruction confronting Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation in the Valerie Plame leak. It appears that, contrary to White House policy, e-mails during a key time of the Plame investigation were deleted en masse.

This development hasn't gotten much attention amid the State of the Union, and the issue has only surfaced in legal filings from Fitzgerald's office. Here's the entirety of what Fitzerald told the Court:

We are aware of no evidence pertinent to the charges against defendant Libby which has been destroyed. In an abundance of caution, we advise you that we have learned that not all email of the Office of Vice President and the Executive Office of President for certain time periods in 2003 was preserved through the normal archiving process on the White House computer system. (Ex. C, p. 6)

Reddhedd precedes this excerpt by thoroughly scrutinizing other filings in an effort to infer what Fitzgerald may know and where his investigation is headed. It is a superb piece of work.