Controversy over e-mails escalates

After a meeting between RNC lawyers and congressional investigators, Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles) said he learned that Rove might have deliberately deleted them himself.

A Washington lawyer retained by the Republican National Committee, Robert K. Kelner, wrote to Waxman's committee later Thursday saying that the statement "mischaracterizes the briefing" because the RNC's search for the missing e-mails was not complete.

As demands for documents escalated, other Democrats suggested Thursday that the White House had withheld potentially embarrassing information, a charge the administration vigorously denies.

"I am beginning to wonder whether the White House has any interest in the American people learning the truth about these matters," said Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, after announcing that the panel had authorized the use of subpoenas to obtain information about the dismissal of eight U.S. attorneys.

He said on the Senate floor Thursday that a teenager could find the lost White House e-mails. "They say they have not been preserved. I don't believe that," Leahy told the Senate. "You can't erase e-mails -- not today. They've gone through too many servers."

At the White House, spokeswoman Dana Perino rejected those comments, telling reporters there was no indication that any crimes were committed in the lost e-mails, and saying that the White House counsel's office was trying to retrieve them.

"We don't have an idea on the universe of the number of e-mails that were lost," she said. "Truly, we just don't know enough yet."

But she also said, "I will admit it. We screwed up and we're trying to fix it." She denied contentions from Leahy that the administration did not want to turn the material over. "He's wrong," she said.

The large e-mail inquiry originated from once-separate congressional probes into allegations of politicization of executive-branch functions by the Bush White House.

The House and Senate judiciary committees uncovered the use of the RNC e-mail addresses by White House staffers as it investigated the firing of eight U.S. attorneys.