While we're on the topic of weird people connections, another one came to our attention while we were investigating SMARTech, the 12-person ISP in Tennessee that runs much of the Republican National Committee's Internet services. The connection gets weird because Ohio's then Secretary of State (the person who oversee's Ohio's elections) was a Republican named Ken Blackwell. Mr. Blackwell was running for Governor of Ohio.

Mr. Blackwell became nationally known in 2004. He had two clearly conflicting roles. He was the chief elections official of Ohio and honorary co-chair of the Committee to Re-elect George W. Bush during the 2004 election. Mr. Blackwell also served under the first President Bush as undersecretary of Department of Housing and Urban Development.

While looking into SMARTech, we saw that Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, part of Housing and Urban Development, hosted its Web site on their servers.

We found it curious that official state election documents appear on a SMARTech server. It is also curious that the senior election official in Ohio was also running for Governor of Ohio while this went on. It is further somewhat curious that a finance oversight agency of HUD runs its Web site on SMARTech's servers and that Mr. Blackwell was previously undersecretary of HUD.

But the weird isn't limited to the Bush administrations. President Bill Clinton's staff tried to change the National Security Council from being considered an agency, thereby preventing Freedom of Information Act requests on NSC communications.

Everything eventually came full circle -- back to Alberto Gonzales. Executive Order 13,233, drafted by then White House Council Alberto Gonzales under President George W. Bush, gives any sitting president new privileges with regard to records. It allows a president to restrict access to these documents -- virtually forever.

Deep flaws
Unfortunately, our discoveries weren't limited by just national security problems or weird people connections. We found deep, intrinsic flaws in how email is managed.

Remember, email at the White House isn't just email, as we normally think of it. Email at the White House is communication at the highest levels of the Executive Branch, communication within the leadership of the most powerful nation in the world.

Email is often more personal than a formal letter, and since email messages are mostly in written form, email is more tangible than a phone call. As such, the accumulated email messages of a White House administration are ideal for digital archeologists, digging for insight (and dirt) on an administration.

It's a tough call: the law requires all presidential email to be archived. And yet, exposed to public view, an administration's email records could prove to be a potent weapon for the opposition. Sift through anyone's email and you're going to find at least one inappropriate or idiotic message. Given the hundreds of millions of email messages that make up the official email record of an administration, you're bound to find one or two that are incredibly embarrassing.