Question Still Remains, Where Did The Obama Administration Get Email Addresses From For Health Care Overhaul Spam Messages

Yesterday I had a post on the Obama administration admitting to
Using taxpayer money to send out Spam in support of their health care overhaul plan (Berman Post: Obama Administration Uses Taxpayer Money to Spam Americans Health Care Overhaul Message). The private company the White House used, GovDelivery, wants to make it very clear that they are in no way responsible for emailing the people who did not sign up. GovDelivery did email them, but they only email people from the lists they are given. The company does not share lists, nor provide contact information to clients. That means that the email addresses of people who never signed up to receive messages were given to GovDelivery, not the other way around. That in turn means that the question of exactly how the White House ended up with them is still unanswered.

As Ed Morrissey points out, the appearance of a cover up may be more of a big deal then what it is they are covering up. Spamming the American people is not nearly as bad as lieing about spamming the American people.

The three possible scenarios I can come up with are all bad to varying degrees for the Obama administration:

1) They really have no idea how they got the email addresses and the apparent bumbling is genuine.

2) They do know and are trying to cover up the truth out of embarrassment. In this scenario, what they did or the way they got the emails really is not 'that bad', but they are trying to cover it up anyways thinking the outcome would have been more favorable then admitting the truth. Here the cover up is worse then the truth.

3) The last scenario is that the truth is actually worse then the cover up. They know the truth and know what covering up is more favorable for them. Beyond legal technicalities there is one thing that pops into my mind that would fit in this category. That is if the Obama administration was harvesting emails from the 'snitch hotline' (Flag@WhiteHouse.com).

I can not tell you which is correct, but what I can tell you is the longer this drags out the worse it will be for the Obama administration.

http://hotair.com/archives/2009/08/23/govdelivery-throwing-obama-under-the-bus

"The White House blamed the dissemination of unsolicited e-mails on the firm they hired to manage its e-mail communications on political issues, but GovDelivery apparently doesn't want to play along with the Oval Office. Verum Serum notes that the company is denying that it supplies e-mail addresses to any of its clients, and insists that it just manages address books
...
basically GovDelivery says that it helps manage data-collection services for its clients (specializing in government agencies) that harvest e-mail addresses, but it doesn't supply them to the customer, and it doesn't take e-mail lists from other customers to use for other programs. The White House contention that the problem was created by its vendor gets quietly but firmly quashed by GovDelivery.
...
Frankly, the White House is making this a lot worse by trying to pass the buck. As far as I know, spam e-mails wouldn't break the law, although it would make the administration look cheesy enough, and that effect has already occurred. They're turning an embarrassment into an indictment of their integrity and honesty. The cover-up is always worse than the crime, and covering up a non-crime makes this administration look immature, petty, and bumbling."