It seems that the Associated Press has taken notice of what CEI’s Chris Horner first reported (here at WUWT and elsewhere) about the EPA’s secret email alias of “Richard Windsor” and has found the same sort of off the books emails to be common in other cabinet political appointees. Thanks to Chris for his hard work leading to the awakening of the MSM to this issue. – Anthony
Emails of top Obama appointees remain a mystery
WASHINGTON (AP) – Some of President Barack Obama’s political appointees, including the Cabinet secretary for the Health and Human Services Department, are using secret government email accounts they say are necessary to prevent their inboxes from being overwhelmed with unwanted messages, according to a review by The Associated Press.
The scope of using the secret accounts across government remains a mystery: Most U.S. agencies have failed to turn over lists of political appointees’ email addresses, which the AP sought under the Freedom of Information Act more than three months ago. The Labor Department initially asked the AP to pay more than $1 million for its email addresses.
The AP asked for the addresses following last year’s disclosures that the former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency had used separate email accounts at work. The practice is separate from officials who use personal, non-government email accounts for work, which generally is discouraged – but often happens anyway – due to laws requiring that most federal records be preserved.
…
“What happens when that person doesn’t work there anymore? He leaves and someone makes a request (to review emails) in two years,” said Kel McClanahan, executive director of National Security Counselors, an open government group. “Who’s going to know to search the other accounts? You would hope that agencies doing this would keep a list of aliases in a desk drawer, but you know that isn’t happening.”
Full story here: http://apnews.myway.com/article/20130604/DA6MPFHG2.html
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Reblogged this on Climate Ponderings and commented:
Disgraceful conduct.
The issue should not be that government employees and appointees have more than one email address. Good heavens, I have 3 live ones; one I use for one-time registrations that will likely spam me.
The real issue is that the multiple email addresses, and even time-limited email addresses, are not properly administered, inventoried, accounted for, and automatically included in FOIA requests. It should not be necessary to specify the email address in an FOIA — only “all emails used by Secretary X in the period Y1 to Y2.” Whether it was KGS2@hhs.gov, or KGS3 or KGS4987 is irrelvant to the request.
Most transparent administration EVAR!
Heads up everyone: Bill Nye is going to do an “ask me anything” on reddit today:
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/new/
Anyone have some suggested questions?
P.J. O’Rourke has some choice words about goverrnment employees.
At least they are using government accounts. Bush administration used Yahoo and Gmail accounts and then destroyed them prior (or after?) being served subpoenas.
Wow Brad, it’s been a while since I heard a “But Buusssh!!” excuse.
How many times did Richard Windsor vote for Obama last election?
Brad says:
June 4, 2013 at 8:43 am
At least they are using government accounts. Bush administration used Yahoo and Gmail accounts and then destroyed them prior (or after?) being served subpoenas.
I doubt this, but even if true it shows the Obama administration is not as smart as Bush’s.
As soon as you hear any politician promise “more transparency” as a campaign promise, you know which direction they will take once elected.
archonix says:
June 4, 2013 at 8:46 am
Wow Brad, it’s been a while since I heard a “But Buusssh!!” excuse.
________________________
Where’ve you been? That’s all we’ve been hearing about the IRS mess from the “Oh,But” party hacks like David Axelrod, Nancy Pelosi, and the rest.
“Oh, but the IRS commissioner was a Bush appointee”.
Shouldn’t we be congratulating Richard Windsor for being awarded the honor of “scholar of ethical behavior”:
http://dailycaller.com/2013/06/03/epa-honors-fake-employee-as-an-ethical-scholar/
mkelly says:
June 4, 2013 at 9:21 am
“I doubt this, but even if true it shows the Obama administration is not as smart as Bush’s.”
________________________
It is the party of the left side of the bell curve, after all.
And yet the Richard Windsor emails have yet to be delivered to Congress as per the subpoena.
“The issue should not be that government employees and appointees have more than one email address. Good heavens, I have 3 live ones; one I use for one-time registrations that will likely spam me.”
=====
You’re not a government agency with an IT department, either. The excuse that’s being proffered is that they would be overwhelmed with outside email. This is transparent BS, because they can screen that out at the firewall. Lame excuse is lame.
Many of the Richard Windsor emails have been released, but they are heavily redacted. In some cases, the entire email contents are redacted. Is the EPA involved in top-secret national security? What reasons could they have for redacting anything in the emails except, perhaps, some sensitive personal information?
pat says:
June 4, 2013 at 9:37 am
And yet the Richard Windsor emails have yet to be delivered to Congress as per the subpoena.
Only once it was discovered that Lisa Jackson was using an alias. But not before.
I’m just as real as any other government employee.
Occurs to me, this should be an invitation to audit, if a govt employee has very little relevant work done on their official email account, the AG can claim they are obviously not doing their work and fire them.
If they then produce an alias account, fire them.
The irony of people collecting from the public purse arguing that they are entitled to privacy.
Could they be too stupid for government?
Nice to see the Presstitutes waking up, will they stay awake? Or are they playing CYA , to avoid the wrath of the citizens they(the media) betrayed?
This expanding exposure of systemic corruption,is a story of the MSM and their complicity.
Politicians are naturally orientated to lust for power by any means available, a free and ethical press was supposed to expose the stupid and dangerous choices by these politicians and thus keep them in check.
The North American (Old)Media’s “Slobbering Love Affair” with all things progressive, has been apparent for decades.There is a reason we get our news from other sources today.
I can sympathise with the issue of the official email getting swamped and needing a private one. But in the company I work in, that private one is something like “Forename-personal.Surname”, not a completely different name. That way, it’s obvious who it belongs to yet it’s recognised as being for internal/informal emails. Surely the Government could do the same?
This truly is ‘Its worse than we thought’, because CEI has shown rather compellingly in its court filings that the purpose of ‘Richard Windsor’ actually was to evade FOIA requests.
archonix says:
June 4, 2013 at 8:46 am
Wow Brad, it’s been a while since I heard a “But Buusssh!!” excuse.
========================================================
For the low information crowd, it’s all they’ve got.
What I find strange about this whole affair is the Obama administration was supposed to understand technology better than any other and still they couldn’t figure out how to filter their mail with their contact list. The only solution they could come up with is a hidden email account.
Luther Wu says:
June 4, 2013 at 9:35 am
mkelly says:
June 4, 2013 at 9:21 am
“I doubt this, but even if true it shows the Obama administration is not as smart as Bush’s.”
________________________
It is the party of the left side of the bell curve, after all.
=========================================================
It just demonstrates the EXTREME HYPOCRISY of the Left.
Every thing the Bush people did was wrong and evil and Obama promised to change all that and here they are being “Bush bad” X 10 and not a peep from them (except Blame Bush)
Attention Luther Wu: I wrote you a brief note on this thread on June 3, 2013 at 9:15PM
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/06/03/climate-sensitivity-deconstructed/#more-87526
Glad you are okay.