Crisis averted at the White House. The e-mail system is back up and running.
E-mail went down at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. late Monday morning, leaving some of the most tech-savvy political operatives in history unplugged. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs gave no explanation for the outage at the time.
It was nearly 24 hours before the press corps received their next e-mail from the White House staff. Finally, at 8:05 a.m. Tuesday, it arrived — the daily guidance and press schedule that journalists across the nation's capitol had been waiting for with bated breath.
The last e-mail from the White House press office before the breakdown arrived just before 9 a.m. Monday, advising that President Barack Obama's event on energy independence in the East Room would be open to all media, instead of just the smaller group of reporters and photographers that typically follows the president.
The malfunction left inboxes in the White House complex and across town eerily empty.
Several hours later, at his briefing for the news media, press secretary Robert Gibbs apologized for being out of electronic touch.
"Our apologies if you've e-mailed any of us in the last two-and-a-half hours," he said. "Our e-mail system is not working so well. So our apologies on that, and we'll endeavor to get you information from earlier in the day, hopefully in a little bit more of a timely manner, if we can get the e-mail to work."
Gibbs' assistants ultimately got the information out the old-fashioned way: on paper.