HARRISBURG -- An electronic file containing a wealth of information left behind by defeated House Minority Whip Michael Veon was erased from a computer inside the Capitol early last year, triggering an unsuccessful in-house attempt to restore the data.

The erasures, which appear to have occurred at the same time stories were breaking about large, state-funded pay bonuses for employees that had worked on Democratic House campaigns, including Mr. Veon's, appear to mark the earliest effort to destroy information that would later figure in a grand jury probe.

A series of e-mails obtained by the Post-Gazette, shows a former Veon aide, Brett Cott, attempting to log into what was called the "G" drive, a computer network shared by Mr. Veon and his staff.

"All the folders are gone," Mr. Cott wrote to employees in the House Democratic Information Technologies department on the evening of Jan. 30, 2007. "There are some random things on it but none of the folders like the scan mail folder and the mailing and polls folder. Had a few things on there that I still need."

Steve Keefer, the director of IT for the House Democrats, immediately forwarded the mail to two other employees.

"I need to find out what happened here asap!!!!!" he told them.

Over the next 36 hours, technicians went through the computer system -- a system Mr. Keefer suggested in later e-mails might have been widely compromised -- and found what appeared to be a deliberate, and largely successful, effort to erase data.

"From what we've been able to find out here, it appears that someone who had access to the folder deliberately deleted all the folders on that drive ... we have log files that should be able to tell us who ... it was done on 1/26 around noon," Mr. Keefer wrote to Mr. Cott the next morning.

Mr. Cott said he had been using the old Veon computer files as recently as Jan. 25 -- the day before they were apparently deleted. That deletion would have come at the same time reporters began inquiries into a series of taxpayer-funded pay bonuses given to hundreds of House employees, some of whom had spent weeks or months off their state jobs while volunteering for House election campaigns in 2006.

House employees were not instructed to preserve records until several days after Gene Stilp, a Harrisburg activist, filed a lawsuit over the bonuses on Jan. 29 -- one day before Mr. Cott reported the files missing. At the same time, the House Democrats had no records retention policy, meaning there was no operative standard on what files should be kept and which ones destroyed. The destruction of the Veon account, however, apparently was not intended by any of the supervisors who were still relying on it.

One person close to the case said, however, that even without a document preservation order, one could be guilty of violating criminal law by destroying records if he or she had reason to believe an investigation might be commenced.

Early exchanges between Mr. Keefer and Mr. Cott dwelt on a motive for the file deletions.

"Do you think one of the people in the DO [the Veon district office in Beaver County, which was closed after he lost re-election] would have done this by accident or something?" Mr. Keefer asked Mr. Cott.

"Not sure," Mr. Cott replied. "Depends on if they still had access. I had to be re-added so if unless they asked to be added back on not sure it could have been them."

Because Mr. Veon had lost his office, his employees either left state employment or were reassigned to other members. Mr. Cott, the former top aide to Mr. Veon, was reassigned to the office of House Majority Leader H. William DeWeese, of Greene County.

According to the e-mails, Mr. Keefer checked on whether Mr. Veon's old staff had somehow retained access to the computer account.

"As of this morning, almost everyone still had access," Mr. Keefer wrote on Jan. 31.

"Damn. Why would they just randomly delete files?" Mr. Cott wrote back.

"Grudge?? Who knows," said Mr. Keefer. "When I opened the folder this morning, there were NO folders ... only a few files left that were in the root directory ... it's like they just went in and deleted all the folders."

A statewide grand jury is currently investigating a possible cover up as part of its wide-ranging probe into the payroll bonuses.

Among aspects of the investigation are the apparent shredding of hundreds of leave of absence slips by House employees, the disappearance of at least one computer backup tape that would have contained information necessary to retrieve e-mails and other computer records, and the apparent deletion of thousands of documents from the House Democrats' computer system.

The e-mails also suggest that House employees sometimes had widespread access to computer files.

Apparent intrigue inside the information technology department reached a high pitch in March of 2007, as details of taxpayer-funded bonuses to House staffers who sometimes missed months of work in 2006, became widespread.

Documents indicate that at some point Mr. Keefer discovered that someone had accessed House Democratic computers throughout the Capitol, and hired an outside consulting firm to find out who was scanning through the computer files.

One of Mr. Keefer's deputies, Darryl Hazelwood, discovered a "generic" access account in the IT system and sent out a memorandum to the administration team:

"This account NEEDS to be deleted! There is NO accountability with this generic account."

One IT employee, Thomas "TJ" Jones, wrote back to Mr. Hazelwood and Mr. Keefer, saying "there seems to be a trust issue here."

"It's not trust TJ," Mr. Keefer responded. "There just have been so many wacky things going on lately with my personal account." Mr. Keefer's e-mail also suggests that "now that we have the explanation, it's all good."

The e-mails do not indicate what explanation had satisfied Mr. Keefer.