Homer Meet Fred. Fred, Homer.

When the Bush administration took office initially under a fat, greyblack cloud of vote fraud controversy, their transition to the White House included a total scrapping of a standardized email archiving system. This preservation of executive branch inner correspondence is law and, as of 1993 was extended to include email records. In 1994 President Bill Clinton's administration took it a step further and had a standardized archiving program installed which also had safeguard capabilities to prevent loss of information.
The Bush White House immediately transitioned to Microsoft Outlook and Exchange, which was completely incompatible with the existing archiving and preservation system and moved record keeping squarely into the Flintstone era. The new system kept emails in a "journal", essentially a folder containing Executive Branch emails. Later staffers would pore over the folders, pull out emails and, if they were chosen to be preserved, MANUALLY name them and store them. A lot like the prehistoric beaked creature pounding out the headline on a slab of slate actually. Ludicrous. Worse, journal files were spread across several servers. Add to that no standard naming convention for the emails that were preserved. Keep going? Improper access controls insured that anyone with access to White House servers, had access to the files. And going? No logging system in place. No record of who accessed/named/saved/deleted/tampered with these files. To anyone doing a minor investigative analysis (me), this required by law system of record preservation is clearly light years away from the most basic adequacy. Wilmmaaaaaaaaaa!
Astoundingly, in an era of self-proclaimed heightened security, these Flinstonian Emporers employ a record keeping system that is vastly cratered, fraught with access issues and severely prone to LOSS OF INFORMATION!
DOHHH!
Ready for the numbers? The White House Office of Administration estimates that in the period from 2003-2005, FIVE MILLION emails have been lost. There are gaps of days where everything is gone. 12 Days from Bush, 16 Days from Cheney. ENTIRE stretches of time where ALL emails have been "lost". That's just two years.

Homer and Fred are currently being sued to restore what is already lost by the Citizens for Responsibilty and Ethics in Washington and the National Security Archive.

Mr. Slate and Monty Burns are getting restless. Their stooges are stonewalling and attracting too much attention.