EPA Hard Drives Crash, Too!

But only after a subpoena is issued.

...members grilled McCarthy on lost emails from a hard-drive crash (the same issue that wiped out emails from IRS employee Lois Lerner). In this case, the emails in question were from retired EPA employee Philip North, who was involved in the agency's decision to begin the process of preemptively vetoing the Pebble Mine project in Alaska.

North, who declined an interview request by the committee, is retired, and committee staff say they have been unable to track him down. According to a committee aide, North's hard drive crashed in 2010--which was around the same time that the committee is investigating the agency's discussions of a potential veto--and the emails were not backed up.

NSA knows where North is, of course, and--like with Lerner--they prolly have the emails in their DB.

We're only missing one element:  North never took the Fifth.

HT:  AOSHQ