March 22, 2007 -- It is time for Congressional investigators to drive to Olney, Maryland with subpoenas in hand. The last time the Bush White House could not find e-mails was last year when it could not find 250 e-mails from 2003 on the leak of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson and Vice President Dick Cheney's smearing of her husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson. Now the White House is missing 18 days of email traffic concerning the sacking of 8 U.S. Attorneys for political purposes. It is all reminiscent of Rose Mary Woods' 18-minute gap in recordings of Richard Nixon's Oval Office during the Watergate scandal. Last year, WMR was contacted by an anonymous source who claimed to have intimate knowledge of how the "EOP" (Executive Office of the President) archived older e-mail and other documents. The source said that it is EOP policy to send archival documents to an underground Federal Support Center at 5321 Riggs Road in Olney, Maryland for safekeeping. WMR passed this "tip" on to those who have "back channel" communications with Patrick Fitzgerald's office with an emphasis that the anonymous source appeared to have a very good working knowledge of White House document handling and archival procedures. The anonymous source suggested that Fitzgerald and a team of FBI agents show up unannounced at the Olney facility and simply seize the e-mails in question. Shortly thereafter, most of the the "missing" 2003 smoking gun e-mails involving Cheney's office were found.
With the Watergate-like 18-day "gap" in White House emails being discovered -- emails between mid-November and the first week of December concerning the firing of US Attorneys have not been turned over to Congressional investigators -- it may be time for those investigators to make a short road trip to Olney, subpoenas for the missing e-mails in hand.