The seventh level wipe

By Libby

I'm getting a late start today because I seem to coming down with a bug of some kind and I have to go out for a couple of hours right now, so read this and tell me what you think.

Scott Bloch runs the Office of Special Counsel, an agency charged with protecting government whistleblowers and enforcing a ban on federal employees engaging in partisan political activity. Mr. Bloch's agency is looking into whether Mr. Rove and other White House officials used government agencies to help re-elect Republicans in 2006.

At the same time, Mr. Bloch has himself been under investigation since 2005. At the direction of the White House, the federal Office of Personnel Management's inspector general is looking into claims that Mr. Bloch improperly retaliated against employees and dismissed whistleblower cases without adequate examination.

Here's the really interesting part:

Recently, investigators learned that Mr. Bloch erased all the files on his office personal computer late last year. They are now trying to determine whether the deletions were improper or part of a cover-up, lawyers close to the case said.

The guy calls in Geeks R Us and has them do a "seven-level" wipe on his hard drive making it nearly impossible to retreive the lost data. He also had them scrub two laptops that were used by his associates. He claims it was to get rid of a virus.

Now, I'm not much of a computer geek but that sounds a little extreme to me just to get rid of a virus. Anybody else thinking the guy was really trying to wipe out all evidence of his own malfeasance in covering up the malfeasance of those he was allegedly investigating?