Note: I felt Steve’s essay deserved the wider audience that WUWT could provide. Be sure to go to this thread at CA to post comments. – Anthony
Did Jones Delete Emails?
By Steve McIntyre, Climate Audit
It turns out that Muir Russell didn’t bother asking, since that would have exposed Jones to potential liability.
But in a surprising new turn of events, it seems that VC Acton sort-of did what Muir Russell was supposed to do – ask Jones whether he had deleted emails. The Guardian reports Acton’s testimony as follows:
Prof Phil Jones told the University of East Anglia’s boss that he did not delete any of the emails that were released from the university last November, despite apparently saying he would in one of those emails.
In the narrowest sense, the very existence of the Climategate emails seems to show that, whatever Jones may or may not have attempted to do, he had not deleted the emails that survived on the back up server.
But, needless to say, you have to watch the pea under the thimble as there is more to the story than this, as I found out last spring.
Jones’ delete-all-emails request was directed particularly at the Wahl-Briffa exchange about IPCC in summer 2006. (In a related emails, Jones said that Briffa should deny the existence of such correspondence to the UEA administration – something that was never investigated as misconduct.)
Wahl’s insertions in the IPCC report – the unilateral changes in assessment that do not appear to have had any third party oversight other than Briffa’s – were made in attachments to his emails to Briffa.
Last spring, I sent an FOI request to the University of East Anglia for the attachments to the Wahl emails that would show precisely what Wahl had inserted. These, of course, are precisely the sort of thing that Muir Russell panel was obligated to examine but didn’t bother.
Contrary to claims by Jones and Acton that nothing had been deleted, the University refused the FOI request on the basis that the attachments had been deleted, that they no longer possessed the attachments to the emails – see previous review here.
In response to my request, they said:
We were unable to provide the following four documents as we had determined that these were no longer held by the University and cited Reg. 12(4)(a):
AW_Editorial_July15.doc
AR4SOR_BatchAB_Ch06_ERW_comments.doc
Ch06_SOD_Text_TSU_FINAL_2000_12jul06_ERW_suggestions.doc
Ch06_SOD_Text_TSU_FINAL_2000_25jul06KRB-FJRV_
ERW_suggestions.doc
There is no single repository in which all information is held and in order to determine whether the University holds specific information searches are required in a number of locations. I have reviewed the criteria and searches that were undertaken to locate the requested documents and agree with the assessment that these documents are no longer held and agree that Reg. 12(4)(a) applies in this instance.
Acton tells the Sci Tech Committee that nothing has been deleted, but when asked for the documents that Jones specifically asked to be deleted, the university refuses the FOI request on the basis that they no longer have the documents.
Needless to say, Muir Russell didn’t bother trying to figure out what was going on.
=======================================================
Meanwhile in the UK, yet another select committee inquiry is in progress, as Josh points out:
Not sure what the Emirates have to do with it (apart from supplying big buckets of oil). UEA, maybe?
REPLY: Thanks, fixed -A
Reading this again:
‘Prof Phil Jones told the University of East Anglia’s boss that he did not delete any of the emails that were released from the university last November’
What does this mean?
It means that the released emails DID NOT include the deleted emails!!!
Send shysters, gats, and loot.
=============
We are approachin g the 1 year anniversary of the leak. Why haven’t they named the hackers?
I am with Barry.
The statement:
‘Prof Phil Jones told the University of East Anglia’s boss that he did not delete any of the emails that were released from the university last November’
Simply means that the deleted emails were not disseminated through the climategate leak. This is a Sir Humphrey-like statemt. Meant to deceive while telling the truth. I am a lawyer and draft such responses every day 😉
Barry. It’s a weasel worded answer that doesn’t answer a meaningful question. It’s obvious that those which were released weren’t deleted, but it doesn’t say that he didn’t delete the emails that mattered . . . . It leaves that option open . . in other words he didn’t lie but he wasn’t being truthful about anything of significance . . . . Any interviewer with half a brain who was concerned about the truth would have realised what was going on, and would have put him on the spot. That the interviewers didn’t ask the obvious question gives the game away . . .
Prof Phil Jones told the University of East Anglia’s boss that he did not delete any of the emails that were released from the university last November, despite apparently saying he would in one of those emails.
Huh? You didn’t delete any of the emails that were released? Well, what about ones that weren’t released?
Me (email’s recipient)and Mr. Jones, we got a thing going on
We both know that it´s wrong
But it´s much too strong to let it go now
We meet ev´ry day at the same cafe
Six-thirty I know he´ll be there
Holding hands, making all kinds of plans
While the jukebox plays our favorite song
Me and Mr., Mr. Jones, Mr Jones, Mr. Jones
We got a thing going on
We both know that it´s wrong
But it´s much too strong to let it go now
We gotta be extra careful (of WUWT)
That we don´t build our hopes too high
Cause he´s got his own obligations and so do I
Me, me and Mr., Mr Jones, Mr Jones, Mr Jones
Well, it´s time for us to be leaving
And it hurts so much, it hurts so much inside
And now he´ll go his way, I´ll go mine
But tomorrow we´ll meet at the same place, the same time
Me and Mr. Jones, Mr. Jones, Mr Jones
Its a statement to the character of the people charged with the responsibility to ask the pertinent questions. They don’t want to, that’s clear. But they have the obligation to do so, that too, is clear. Yet they don’t. Why? Because they don’t have the character to face their own beliefs. I just really don’t believe they are capable of such introspection. It isn’t a point of showing malfeasance. That would be easy for that lot. We’ve all seen them throw people under the bus for furtherance of an agenda. But destroying their entire belief system, they simply lack the fortitude for such an endeavor.
Anthony, I’m sure Steve is blogging all this right now precisely because of the UK Parliamentary committee reopening the debate today with Davies, Acton and Muir Russell. Steve is shining the spotlight, showing the evidence in the details that Jones, Muir Russell, Davies, are all guilty of thimblerigging – conspiracy to defraud.
Davies – it’s his university
Jones – it’s his life’s work
Muir Russell is the one trying to make light of it all. Just acton under orders, guv.
Well I would much rather their punishment was not to lose their job but be required to make amends – when they’ve acknowledged the error of their ways, with all the pain that entails – 12-step program style. Muir Russell will lose his reputation – but I think he was appointed because being already a bumbling idiot, he could be persuaded to do things Davies’ way. And all Davies saw was threatened loss of their crown jewel – not wanting to face the fact that the whole data record is FUBAR and the IPCC too. Selfishly blind to global consequences of his pet CRU BS.
I suspect that he attempted to delete e-mails, possibly successfully deleting some, but had no idea how very difficult it is to rid a networked system of all copies.
In the UEA/CRU ivory towers of climate science, the first order of reaction is just close ranks with pal investigators inside circled wagons to rig the outcome. Just the opposite of what is in their best interest. These are honorable scientists? Wow.
These guys just do not think they are part of the same reality that they as scientists claim to be studying.
They are finding out the hard way that their actions in the real world have consequences that they will not be able to prevent is spite of all this linguistic tap dancing going on.
The UEA/CRU and ‘the Team’ are being widely mocked and openly laughed at in an ever broadening public venue.
John
Dr. Jones apparently wrote this email, textbook evidence of conspiracy to violate the FOIA, and then did not delete the incriminating email. I thought he was supposed to be a bright guy!
Best,
Frank
whatever happened to the police inquirey into the leaked emails?
/Mango
George GR: I lawyered for 48 years before retiring. I submit that an incomplete or partial answer that is designed to deceive is not the truth. When full disclosure or a complete answer would produce a different conclusion the partial answer is a lie.
No thanks for giving lawyer bashers more ammunition to disparage us.
To “delete” something is not the same as to “destroy” something. When something is destroyed it can no longer be recovered. When something is deleted it is possible to un-delete for use later. The art of modern semantics is so like a beach, never the same, always changing, a lawyer’s dream or nightmare.
PS: Depending on how much money one has it is possible to “reconstruct” something that was destroyed.
It seems to me that something that has not been done is as follows: Every email is marked by mail servers with a unique message-id. This is in the raw source for the email. Presumably there is a well-known algorithm for assigning these id’s, and from this one can work backwards and determine the message id’s in any stream of emails with missing messages. Further, if a message is in reply to another message, the message-id of the prior email will also be preserved in the raw source.
Assuming that the leaked folders contain raw source of emails (unlike the publicly posted versions of those messages), an enterprising data miner should be able to collect a long list of message-id’s for messages missing in the correspondence, their dates and who sent them to whom. A further FOIA could be constructed specifically naming these documents. Or if anyone is contemplating a court case based on these missing emails at any time, the information would be helpful for subpoena’ing documentary evidence. If hard drives can be obtained through legal channels, then it would be possible in many cases to obtain some or all of the text of some of these emails using this information, even long after they had been deleted, as long as the drives hadn’t been carefully wiped of old data.
My feeling, from reading the emails has all along been that the FOIA directory existed not to COMPLY with the FOIA but to circumvent it. I believe the directory was built by Jones, Mann et al, as an initial step toward deletion of its contents. The idea was to build a consensus that the files contained material they didn’t want to get into the hands of the general public, and that it didn’t contain anything they felt was necessary for their own work. In order to collaborate on this project it was necessary to leave the directories on some public server (perhaps password-encrypted, but more likely they felt that for the short time it would be available it was not a security risk to leave it up, as nobody would be likely to make a wild guess of its existence and location). Somehow the “wrong” (= “right”) person got their hands on these files in their insecure location. The rest is history. It would be necessary, especially with the emails, to have this kind of general consensus, in order that ALL copies of offending emails be deleted. No point in deleting just some if another recipient is forced by FOIA to release his copy. The archive was necessary to coordinate the deletions.
Given what I know now about these files my guess is that my original theory is correct, but that this is a SECOND iteration of the process: they had already successfully negotiated a large directory of files and emails to delete, carried it out, and then begun to accumulate a secondary archive of similar, but less damaging material — it was this second archive that got released.
Another, thought: In the FOIA emails there are surely some individuals outside “the team” who are occasionally copied in these mails. I think it’s highly likely that such people have copies of mail that was “disappeared” by the team. I think it’s unlikely that those outside the inner circle would be permitted to access this archive. Perhaps it was someone’s judgement error about letting one such outsider examine the archive to help with deletions that led to the release of the files.
It is common practice for the attachments to backed up Emails to be deleted after a time.
Did he try to delete them? Did he delete them from his computer and email service, but he did not delete the copies which were released? Did he delete the email messages which the deletion message was referring to?
Obviously, he did not delete the emails that were released, or they couldn’t have been released.
So Phil didn’t delete any of the emails that were released- if he had, they wouldn’t have been released now, would they? Where have I heard that phrasing before? Ah yes, Frederick Pohl’s novel, Homegoing:
“I’m sorry, Obie. I guess I just don’t like pithing cubs.”
“What’s the matter, Sandy? You’ve done it before.”
“I didn’t like it then, either,” Lysander confessed.
“But we have to pith them,” Obie said reasonably. “For their own sake, you know? It keeps them from being too smart.”
Lysander blinked at him. “What do you mean, too smart?”
“Oh, too smart,” Obie said vaguely. “Can you imagine how horrible it would be for them if they grew up with, you know, some kind of rudimentary intelligence? So you’d know that you were alive only so you could be killed and eaten?”
“They can’t be that smart!”
“Not after we pith them, no,” Obie said smugly.
“But— But— But it’s wrong to kill intelligent creatures, isn’t it?”
“They aren’t intelligent. That’s why they’re pithed.”
“But you’re telling me they would be, if we just didn’t pith them. There has to be a better way! Can’t the gene-splicers arrange them so that they aren’t intelligent?”
“Oh, Lysander,” Obie sighed. “Do you imagine they didn’t think of that? They keep trying. But it always spoils the taste of the meat.”
All of which goes to show, once again, that internal investigations are of little value in restoring lost public confidence.
For UEA, it would have been better for them NOT to have undertaken such an endeavor, as the damage is now compounded.
Paddy, I agree, mostly. I probably was a bit bombastic.
However, looking at the statement, you have to agree that the statement is perfectly true, even logic. It is only when you read carefully you realise that it is not an answer to the question. Therein lies the “trick” ( as in a clever thing to do… The Team must be proud). Being an experienced lawyer, you are used to read carefully and extract the full meaning of every sentence, every word. Most people are not.
In my job, careful wording and precision is importan. Sometimes, what is not said is the most telling. “Tricks” like the one mentioned is not part of my standard repertoaire though 😉
THE central question remains: why don’t we know who leaked?
he did not delete any of the emails that were released from the university
TRANSLATION
he did not burn the copy of Climatgate you bought in the bookstore… but he did burn every other copy of Climatgate after you left the bookstore.
Of course he deleted emails, he just didn’t call it deleting emails, he called it homogenizing the inbox to a future amount of positive content all in line with the hookeyschtick methodology.