UPDATE: I got a direct email from the EPA with a statement. See below.
From Investors Business Daily:
Clandestine Government: During his first full day in the White House, Barack Obama promised he’d brought with him “a new era of open government.” Yet again, we have a promise that hasn’t been kept.
Among the administration’s many violations of public trust to recently become public is the Environmental Protection Agency’s apparent attempt to keep some of its correspondence hidden from the light of day through the use of aliases.
EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, for instance, has reportedly used the name “Richard Windsor” to cover her tracks in private emails.
Federal law prohibits the government from using private emails for official communications unless they are appropriately stored and can be tracked. Because things look suspicious at the EPA, the House Science Committee is investigating the possibility that the agency has conducted business it doesn’t want the public to see.
On Friday, the committee delivered letters to the EPA and “various agency inspectors general” seeking to find out if “senior personnel have been conducting official business through secretive means such as aliases and private email accounts.”
The letters, sent by committee Republican members, express concern that “senior Obama Administration appointees” might be violating the Federal Records Act, Freedom of Information Act, the Presidential Records Act, and “other statutes designed to facilitate transparency and oversight.”
Read More At IBD: http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/111912-634046-epa-lisa-jackson-emailing-as-richard-windsor.htm#ixzz2ClZF2f8J
UPDATE: This email was sent directly to me this morning, comments follow.
============================================================
From: Johnson.Alisha@xxxxxx.epa.gov
Sent: Tuesday, November 20, 2012 9:16 AM
To: awatts@xxxxxx.xxx
Subject: EPA Statement
Want to make sure you have EPA’s statement on your story this a.m. This is attributable to EPA, the Agency.
For more than a decade, EPA Administrators have been assigned two official, government-issued email accounts: a public account and an internal account. The email address for the public account is posted on EPA’s website and is used by hundreds of thousands of Americans to send messages to the Administrator. The internal account is an everyday, working email account of the Administrator to communicate with staff and other government officials.
Given the large volume of emails sent to the public account –more than 1.5 million in fiscal year 2012, for instance – the internal email account is necessary for effective management and communication between the Administrator and agency colleagues.
In the case of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, both the public and internal accounts are reviewed for responsive records, and responsive records from both accounts are provided to FOIA requesters.
=============================================================
That may be so, but it doesn’t explain these things.
1. Why is the account named “Richard Windsor” instead of something like headadmin.internal@internalmail.epa.gov
2. Why there’s no “Richard Windsor” listed at EPA
3. The reticence at making emails public, as required by law.
The EPA has failed to convince.
See this new post where Horner responds here:
Chris Horner responds to the EPA statement today on the question of them running a black-ops program
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The trouble with enviros is that once they get convinced they are in a war and the very survival of the biosphere is at stake, there is literally nothing beneath them, in the sense that the most abhorrent actions will still be justified as necessary on the path to save the planet.
B.O’s response to this will likely show what can be expected from the administration for the rest of the term. If he hangs her out to dry then climate change as an issue is dead in the water. More likely is that he’ll do what politicians normally do and cover his own rear end.
Any entity – or agency – that has the power to do anything it wants by declaring something envirnmental unfriendly, whether or not that is so, needs to be watched closely. Since the EPA is taking part in the “great climate change scam,” its officials and the agency itself would undoubtedly react in the same manner as the rest of the climategate partners. I put nothing past any organization that works well beyond its mandate.
It would not surprise me to see them declare oxygen a pollutant because it causes the destruciton of so many things through the process of “oxidation,” and the fact that it is necessary for life would mean nothing to them. Oh yes, we can declare an “oxygen” tax to go hand in hand with the carbon tax being propossed tor the other essential gas, carbon dioxide. That way that get us for breathing in, and also for breathing out.
The most trans-errant administration in history.
Well, the administration is transparent in the sense that we can see through it.
The current administration is Morally Bankrupt.
“The trouble with enviros is that once they get convinced they are in a war and the very survival of the biosphere is at stake, there is literally nothing beneath them, in the sense that the most abhorrent actions will still be justified as necessary on the path to save the planet.”
In one word “Fascist” with a big F.
The problem is that Obama’s justice dept would be in charge of any investigations. Which means that they will sit on this and stall for as many years as they can.
If Lisa Jackson were David Petreus, the scandal would already be uncovered. The problem is that to get people to move against officials in DC, your scandal has to do with sexual impropriety, it seems. If you merely break various laws in pursuit of policy, it takes a long time to get to the bottom of it, the FBI won’t be of any help to you.
The solution is obvious: get the NY Post to allege that the Richard Windsor alias was used to cover up a masochistic affair with Sen. Inhofe. Then we will soon know what is in those emails!
Here’s some good news:
Amid budget scrutiny, CIA shutters climate center — http://eenews.net/public/Greenwire/2012/11/19/1
The EPA has a secret agenda which will kill US industry. Any method to reduce their power will help industry and help reduce the US $T debt mountain that is the millstone round the necks of US citizens. Jackson certainly needs to go.
Is B.O. running a B.O.?
Smells like B.O., that’s for sure.
Richard Windsor is the secret code name of EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson used in some communications over the Internet? Behavior that appears to suggest hiding things that she/he knows are in violation of the regulations and policies.
And what’s with the opposite sex code name? Creepy.
John
The Daily Caller reported first that Jackson was using an email alias, based on research by Competitive Enterprise Institute fellow Christopher Horner.
He says the agency’s use of secret email accounts dates back to the Clinton administration and then-Administrator Carol Browner.
“You remember Ms. Browner, the lady who suddenly ordered her computer hard drive reformatted and backup tapes erased, hours after a federal court issued a ‘preserve’ order … that her lawyers at the Clinton Justice Department insisted they hadn’t yet told her about?” Horner said in the Daily Caller story.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/11/19/house-investigates-epa-emails-agency-says-administrators-have-two-accounts/
An interesting question might be: with whom were these false aliases used to communicate?
Between the EPA’s officials, involving no outsiders?
Between the EPA and activist organisations?
Between the EPA and other US government bodies?
Between the EPA and the White House?
It could be amusing, perhaps appalling, to see what scuttles out from under this particular rock.
For someone who is not a USA citizen, but in response to John Marshal’s comment: “The EPA has a secret agenda which will kill US industry.”
Can someone please explain to me what the EPA has to gain in killing the backbone of a nations existence, and hence destroy its own existence? I fail to see the logic here.
John said:
“If Lisa Jackson were David Petreus, the scandal would already be uncovered.”
I heard from a homeless can collector (a reliable source for most journalists) that she was using the fake e-mail address to hide multiple affairs.
Now that I’ve started the rumor, maybe the media will pay attention.
Just try and google “Richard Windsor”. Hilarious.
@John Marshall
Lisa Jackson is doing the bidding of her boss. If she goes, another clone will take her place.
OPEN LETTER { A Parody }
To: Richard Windsor @ur momisugly USA’s EPA
It has come to my attention that you may have been cross dressing at work in a wardrobe style very much like that of EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson. And further you have been using the women’s bathroom at the EPA office.
This has caused uncontrollable giggling in the EPA office causing productivity to drop.
As a US taxpayer, your behavior causes waste of public funds. Please stop.
Note: your private life is your own business but it about to come out in the MSM that you have been sleeping in the bed of EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson.
Signed;
A Concerned Citizen
{ The Parody Ends }
Ohhhhh . . . This can be fun . . .
Wouldn’t it be creepy if Mann was found to use a female code name to evade FOI?
John
I noted on an earlier thread that Fox News has picked up this story. Waiting to see if other news channels might do likewise.
She is a crook. Plain and simple. Now what are you going to do about it Obama? Do you walk the walk or were your transparent government promises just hot air? We all know the answer.
This is the most corrupt government since Nixon.
One has to ask whether the use of private emails is restricted to the EPA… and I doubt it is. I wouldn’t be surprised if communications related to the Justice Department’s Operation Fast and Furious, where untold number of Mexican citizens and one US Border Patrol agent were murdered because of actions by this administration were similarly hidden. The Benghazi fiasco and the ensuing coverup on who did what and when is another candidate. When Obama became president, he insisted on being allowed to carry a Blackberry… maybe now we know why.
omnologos,
I’m reminded of the words of Voltaire:
What do you mean, program? Blatant misuse of the singular case.