UPDATE: I’ve confirmed this document, see below the “read more” line.
It appears bigger things are brewing related to CRU’s Climategate.
WUWT commenter J.C. writes in comments:
I work at the Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina. I’ve been following the Climategate scandal since its inception. The first time many of my coworkers had heard of the situation was when I asked them about it.
Well, well, well.
Look what was waiting in every single email Inbox on Monday morning:
______________________________________________
“December 14, 2009
DOE Litigation Hold Notice
DOE-SR has received a “Litigation Hold Notice” from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) General Council and the DOE Office of Inspector General regarding the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in England. Accordingly, they are requesting that SRNS, SRR and other Site contractors locate and preserve all documents, records, data, correspondence, notes, and other materials, whether official or unofficial, original or duplicative, drafts or final versions, partial or complete that may relate to the global warming, including, but not limited to, the contract files, any related correspondence files, and any records, including emails or other correspondence, notes, documents, or other material related to this contract, regardless of its location or medium on which it is stored. In other words, please preserve any and all documents relevant to “global warming, the Climate Research Unit at he University of East Anglia In England, and/or climate change science.”
As a reminder, this Litigation Hold preservation obligation supersedes any existing statutory or regulatory document retention period or destructive schedule. The determination of what information may be potentially relevant is based upon content and substance and generally does not depend on the type of medium on which the information exists. The information requested may exist in various forms, including paper records, hand-written notes, telephone log entries, email, and other electronic communication (including voicemail), word processing documents (including drafts, spreadsheets, databases, and calendars), telephone logs, electronic address books, PDAs (like Palm Pilots and Blackberries), internet usage files, systems manuals, and network access information in their original format. All ESI should be preserved in its originally-created, or “native” format, along with related metadata. Relevant backup tapes and all indexes for those tapes should also be preserved. Further, information that is reasonably accessible must nonetheless be preserved, because such sources will, at the very least, need to be identified and, under compelling circumstances, may need to be produced.
If you have any doubts as to whether specific information is responsive, err on the side of preserving that information.
Any employee who has information covered by this Litigation Hold is requested to contact Madeline Screven, Paralegal, SRNS Office of General Council, 5-4634, for additional instructions.
Michael L. Wamsted
Associate General Council”
_______________________________________________
Everyone on-site who has an email account received this letter. That’s somewhere in the neighborhood of 8000 people. How about that? And this is the first official mention of the entire subject that I have seen.
DOE-SR = Department of Energy Savannah River
SRNS = Savannah River Nuclear Solutions
SRR = Savannah River Remediation
NOTE: Some commenters raised some doubts about the authenticity of this email.
I checked out a couple of things before I posted this. The IP address of J.C. comes from the correct location in South Carolina, Aiken, and the name Michael L. Wamsted does work for DOE at the SRS in SC in legal. See http://phonebook.doe.gov/
Also the existence of the paralegal “Madeline Screven” listed in the email (whom I believe composed it) is listed in the DOE phonebook search of “Screven” and is listed in the same building as Wamsted.
The “Council -vs- Counsel” spelling error could be something as simple as a spell checker substituting the wrong word, or just a dumb mistake when composing email where the spell checker would not flag “council” as it is spelled correctly. Heck, I misspell “meteorologist” sometimes in correspondence, dropping an “o”. I have had a situation sometimes where “metrologist” (also valid) gets substituted on spell check. Spelling mistakes, compounded with spell checker substitution errors – they happen. I have one computer (the one I’m typing on) that always switches the word “because” to “becuase” in spell checks for some odd reason, and I can’t figure out how to correct it. So I live with it and try to manually fix it when I notice it. There is another spelling error “Climate Research Unit at he University”. Which is a mistake I make from time to time, missing the “t” on the. Spell checkers don’t catch that one, since “he” is a correctly spelled word.
If the IP had not come from Aiken, SC where Savannah River Site and lab is, I would be highly suspect of it. But the IP address in Aiken and the names check out. Aiken is right next to SRS.
See the doc and map for directions here: http://www.srs.gov/general/about/directions_aiken.pdf
The language used also checks out, it has been reviewed by an attorney who frequents WUWT and he raised no red flags. Steve McIntyre points out that Dr. Jones got funding from DOE (of which SRS is part of). The different pieces connect pretty well and I don’t have a reason to doubt this memo sent via email today. – Anthony
======================
UPDATE: 12/15/12:36 PST
I called SRS Legal office just now and spoke with Madeline Screven, who is listed as a paralegal in the letter I posted. I found her telephone number via the DOE phonebook.
When I called, she fully identified herself in her greeting to me, I explained who I was, giving my full name. She asked if I was “on or off site” referring to SRS. I explained I’m off-site.
My question: “Do you have a litigation hold notice related to the Climate Research Unit.”
Her answer: “Yes we do”
Confirmed.
This is going to cost them. Not only an incredibly difficult (and painful) search, but also what’s going to happen to them when the alums finally catch on and the spigot goes dry.
If I were UAE, I’d save a lot of money by simply setting fire to the building and blaming AGW.
Wow,
Funny how they start out so tentatively
“Accordingly, they are requesting that SRNS, SRR and other Site contractors locate and preserve all documents, blahblah…”
and then say;
“In other words, please preserve any and all documents ”
and only in the second paragraph do they get around to;
“this Litigation Hold preservation obligation”
As the prior post noted, failure to preserve documents under Litigation Hold can be deemed to be a felony offense…
Yikes!
TL
Alex Jones is going to have a field day with this.
Remember that Ben Santer, who wrote an email to the CRU people saying he wanted to punch somebody, works at the Lawrence Livermore National Lab, which, like Savannah River, is a DOE lab. My guess is that the DOE sent emails like this to every employee at all the national labs.
The official definition of travesty is:
That it is a poor imitation — for example the phrase “The trial was a travesty of justice”, means that the trial was a joke, or ridiculous imitation of what a trial should be and was not what you would expect from the process.
As used in that email, it means that it is ridiculous, and extremely embarrassing, that the best “climatologists” in the world, do not know why the cooling is occurring.
It is an expression of extreme frustration, and even some anger. The fact they cannot explain it, greatly weakens their assertion that they ” completely understand climate” if the public knew they did not understand the cause. It also implies that their models are not very competent.
Larry
Here is a pretty good definition of a Litigation Hold.
http://definitions.uslegal.com/l/litigation-hold/
The first part reads
“A litigation hold, also known as a “preservation order” or “hold order” is a temporary suspension of the company’s document retention [and] destruction policies for the documents that may be relevant to a law suit or that are reasonably anticipated to be relevant. It is a stipulation requiring the company to preserve all data that may relate to a legal action involving the company. A litigation hold ensures that the documents relating to the litigation are not destroyed and are available for the discovery process prior to litigation.”
OT … the wonderful “hide the climategate” Google now has its version of truth, a lil “suggestion” below the search box
takes you to this site: http://www.google.com/landing/cop15/
Any guesses how much Skeptic Data is there, and how much AlGlory informercials are there?
And you might run out of hands counting how many links are there for climategate. (if you are an double-amputee)
I believe that the ClimateGate hero has delivered the thing that the political class needed. For whatever the reason, the climate is getting cooler. This is becoming so obvious that it can no longer be ignored. For those politicians that supported the global warming proposition, they now have an out: we were lied to by Scientists. Whether they know it or not, the Team will now be destroyed for the reputations of those that have no idea about weather or climate.
With all the out of work lawyers in the Real Estate industry now, there should be plenty of them to go around.
Hopefully the EPA and NOAA will get their notices
“Nothing to see here, move along , move along …”
Oh how we laughed.
Wow! As a UK resident it is good to see a country wit a democratic system that actually has some teeth. It all changed when they tried to tell you what light bulbs you could have in your house.
Go USA…
I notice some people are wondering why the DOE would be concerned with all this climategate mess. The short answer is that the E stands for energy. Any and all topics related to energy fall under their domain (though they tend to be known mostly for their nuclear research efforts). For example, their latest Phase I SBIR* notice contains these sub-topics:
There are others, as well, that touch on climate related issues. The solicitation (closed 11/20/2009) can be found at http://www.science.doe.gov/sbir/Funding.html (the 2010 Phase I funding notice).
Mark
*SBIR = small business innovation research
tokyoboy (20:39:17) :
As a poor non-English native, it’s hard for me to grasp the meaning of “litigation hold”
All the things listed could be used in a court of law.
—————————————————
just did a quick search on the term “litigation hold”
http://www.expertbusinesssource.com/blog/720000272/post/1900010190.html
I wonder if Copenhagen has heard the good news?
Steve McIntyre (21:35:33) :
DOE funded Jones for 25 years.
The plot thickens.
It may be related to the CEI’s suits. e.g.,
Competitive Enterprise Institute Sues NASA in Wake of Climategate Scandal
The word is out.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=DOE+sends+a+%E2%80%9Clitigation+hold+notice%E2%80%9D+regarding+CRU+to+employees+%E2%80%93+asking+to+%E2%80%9Cpreserve+documents%E2%80%9D&btnG=Google+Search&aq=f&oq=&aqi=
Thanks to a couple of excellent mentors I now feel having grasped both “litigation hold” and “travesty”. Thank you so much.
INGSOC (20:38:45) :
Of even greater import perhaps?
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/12/climategate_tko_in_copenhagen.html
I think so. Is this the beginning of a quiet disengagement from the whole idea in the light of what might secretly been learned from Climategate? There seems to be quite a lot of backtracking right now, both among politicians and scientists.
YES! THIS IS A MERRY CHRISTMAS!!! It may turn out to be a very happy New Year.
As an attorney who deals with electronic data cases on a regular basis, I have a few thoughts on this letter.
This letter does not necessarily mean that litigation has commenced. As an attorney, I send “preservation letters” all the time before litigation. Essentially, a preservation letter states that the recipient must retain and preserve the specified evidence, i.e., they cannot delete or otherwise destroy such evidence. After sending a preservation letter, we often use computer forensic experts to create back-up images of all drives and media that may contain electronic data relevant to the matter at hand. Likewise, after a client receives such a letter I recommend that they make their own backups.
The failure to preserve and retain the electronic data constitutes spoliation of evidence and may subject the defendant to legal claims for damages and/or evidentiary and monetary sanctions. If they fail to preserve evidence, the court will generally impose sanctions, which may include: a) the plaintiff being able to present evidence at trial regarding the defendants’ failure to preserve electronic data; b) an instruction to the jury that it may presume that the destroyed evidence would have been favorable to the plaintiff; and c) permission for counsel to argue to the jury that the evidence that was destroyed likely was negative for the defendant.
In short, the destruction of evidence leads to a presumption that the evidence was bad for the party that destroyed it. Regarding the preservation letter mentioned above, I have two thoughts as to its purpose. First, an interested party may have sent a preservation letter to the DOE. Second, the DOE has most certainly reviewed the CRU matter and may know even more about it than is in the public domain. Thus—realizing that the climate-change game may be up soon—the DOE may be taking proactive steps to salvage its reputation when the house of cards comes down. Perhaps the DOE realizes that it may at some point be shown to be complicit in the biggest scandal in modern times. In such a case, the DOE can then say: “Hey look, we were duped too, and as soon as we realized it we began a campaign to ferret out all the miscreants involved.” In any event, this letter is actually more interesting if no preservation letter has been received by the DOE as this would suggest that it may intend to go after grant recipients who were cooking the books! This situation, of course, will probably only come about once the mainstream media picks up the story and scientists and research centers/universities (grant recipients) are shown to have falsified and/or improperly manipulated data, etc. If they did it in concert with others, there may even be conspiracy and racketeering charges.
Finally, the DOE may just be doing this as a defensive tactic so that climate skeptics cannot later state that evidence was destroyed, i.e., there would be a presumption that global warming is bunk science because of the spoliation of evidence.
We even have a Digg!
http://digg.com/environment/DOE_sends_a_litigation_hold_notice_regarding_Climategate
Lots of questions if other agencies (other DOE facilities, NOAA, NASA, EPA etc) have received similar notes. Any insiders reading care to comment either way?
CLIMATE AUDIT DOT GOV
Reply: Polite hand clap. ~ ctm
Long time lurker. Whilst I have always doubted AGW it was not until I started reading these pages, a few weeks before climategate broke, that I found the information to be able to know my gut feeling was right and the ability to look at real information for myself.
I now find myself in the position of being drawn to my computer to see just what these idiots has been up to.
A huge vote of thanks to Anthony and all the other selfless people that make this site possible – you deserve to be awarded for your diligence.
On this particular thread, I thought an “oldy-but-a-goody” might be in order. Whilst this video refers to Arthur Andersen, it just seemed appropriate!
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=3948160
a smarter person than I could probably link this in, or indeed find the original (this copy from a facebook was all I could find)
Keep up the good fight