Message #195432

[Chastity]

But don't get too excited -- the e-mails could take years to become accessible to the public.

"The actual timeframe is not clear," said Melanie Sloan, CREW's executive director. "The emails could be released in 5, maybe 10 years under the Presidential Records Act."

In any case, the recovery of the emails will shed some light on why they went missing in the first place and why the Bush administration "knowingly continued to use a broken system for preserving electronic records," according to a CREW press release.

Norm Eisen, special counsel to the president for ethics and government reform, wrote in a White House blog post: "The President is firmly committed to ensuring that the records of this Administration--as well as those of all previous administrations--are properly retained and preserved. We are pleased to see this matter reach an amicable resolution."