Truth really is stranger than fiction sometimes. A Delaware tax official is stating quite baldly that records of how and why someone got into into Republican Christine O’Donnell’s tax records have been destroyed.

Delaware state officials have told Congress that they likely destroyed the computer records that would show when and how often they accessed Christine O’Donnell’s personal tax records and acknowledged that a newspaper article was used as the sole justification for snooping into the former GOP Senate candidate’s tax history.

The excuse is that such records are destroyed after three months, which seems a very short time frame.

Mr. Grassley’s staff also was told that Delaware officials do not think they kept any of the computerized records showing when their investigators accessed Ms. O’Donnell’s tax records because such searches are stored for only three months before they are deleted or destroyed.

The scandal against which all American scandals are measured, Watergate, didn’t really erupt until months after the June 1972 break-in, with both the newspaper reporting of Woodward and Bernstein and a CBS News story both appearing in October.

One never knows when something untoward is going to come to light, so anything that could be questionable — like records of who’s been getting into someone’s tax records — should be kept far longer than three months. If nothing else, Delaware should have plenty of egg on their collective faces for this one.