A setup prerequisite change in Exchange 2007 SP1

This may be a dumb question, or not entirely on-topic (though I’m not sure that it’s entirely off-topic either).  I’m fairly new to working with some of these programs, but it seems to me that you are essentially suggesting that emails are never really lost -- it’s only a matter of tracking down which folder they wound up in, and that depends on how the program is set up and how the messages are actually sent.  Does this discussion have any bearing on the current White House scandal involving the loss of email from many administration officials and staffers?  While I wouldn’t necessarily expect that they would be using this specific program, surely there are similarities to be found, and I’d be interested to know from a technical point of view how you would explain the fact that a number of emails actually were lost in one way or another.