Washington Post [1] picked up the story about the Bush administration destroying e-mails.  It's becoming a major news story:

In a court affidavit filed shortly before midnight yesterday, the official in charge of overseeing White House computer systems said that recycling, or overwriting, the backup tapes was "consistent with industry best practices related to tape media management."

But Theresa Payton, chief information officer in the Office of Administration, also said the White House stopped the practice in October 2003 and that backups made since then have been preserved.

Payton did not explain in her sworn statement why the White House stopped recycling its backup tapes. She also said that White House officials have not determined whether e-mail also is missing from 2003 to 2005.

"At this stage, this office does not know if any e-mails were not properly preserved in the archiving process" during that time, Payton said. "We are continuing our efforts."

In their lawsuit, the two advocacy groups, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and the National Security Archive, allege that millions of e-mail messages are missing from White House servers between 2003 and 2005. The White House repeatedly has declined to characterize how many e-mails may be missing, saying that officials are continuing to investigate possible "anomalies" in the records.

Anne L. Weismann, chief counsel for the ethics group, said the new disclosure raises additional questions about the Bush administration's management of public records.

"They didn't have what any archival person would consider to be an electronic record-keeping system," Weismann said. "These are not the steps of a White House committed to preserving records or meeting its obligations under the law."

White House officials did not immediately offer comment on the court filing.

We're looking forward to the next White House briefing to see what the story is now from the Bush administration.