A lot happened in 2003. March 2003 is the month in which the U.S. began its invasion of Iraq. In April, U.S. forces seized control of Saddam International Airport and then control of Bagdad. And, in May, President Bush climbed aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln under the banner "Mission Accomplished".

Those missing email messages are key windows into a critical portion of recent American history - and may also be key to the cleanup operation your team is likely to have to deal with.

If there's any chance those messages can be recovered, they must be. Not only are they history, it's the law.

And here's where your team comes in. Filled with enthusiasm, they're likely to start using those computers sitting on their new desks. Your people might reformat the hard drives, install their own software, and otherwise treat the computers as office equipment for their own use.

Or, if they find old computers, dusty and in the way, members of your team might just toss them out, or otherwise take action to get them out of the way.

Neither of these activities must happen.

What must happen is this: each computer your team finds in the White House and the EOB must be treated as evidence. Each machine must be cataloged and then removed for forensic examination.

Under no circumstances should anyone on your team boot up any of those machines or use them.

This is critically important and you're going to have only one shot. If you use those machines, you might overwrite deleted files that could otherwise be recovered. You could possibly cover the few remaining tracks that might be available, the few possible clues to a period of real upheaval in our history.

So, please, amidst trying the save the world in your first 100 days, please also save the Presidential records that may be hiding out on some old computers.

History will thank you.