Bush Aide Addresses Missing RNC E-Mails At Senate Hearing, Jennings Is Silent on U.S. Attorneys' Firings; Rove Is Absent

By Paul Kane

washingtonpost.com Staff Writer Friday, August 3, 2007; Page A02

J. Scott Jennings, 29, the deputy political director for the White House, refused to address the firings but tried to explain how thousands -- or possibly millions -- of White House e-mails to and from the political office were transmitted only through communications accounts controlled by the Republican National Committee. Jennings offered a stripped-down explanation: He wanted a White House-supplied BlackBerry and was told no, and so he got one from the RNC, as many other political affairs aides had done. "I was receiving a lot of e-mail on my official account. And I requested [a BlackBerry] at that moment, and I was told that it wasn't the custom to give political affairs staffers those devices," Jennings said. ____________________________________________________________________ Well, there you have it. There's no withholding of evidentiary e-mails, no avoidance on the part of Karl Rove to play it straight with Congress and the American public, no deep dark conspiracy-- it's just that in the hundreds of billions expended on Iraq, there wasn't anything left for Blackberrys. Who knew?

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