Earlier today I posted this story linking to the IBD editorial:
Is the EPA running a black-ops program?
I got this direct email statement from the EPA, to which Horner responds.
This email was sent directly to me this morning, my 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.
###
Now Chris Horner, the man behind the FOIA requests and lawsuit, sends this via email:
There’s a little more to the story than the anodyne “for more than a decade”, now isn’t there? See http://cei.org/legal-briefs/cei-v-epa-complaint-re-secret-accounts paras 2-5 incl FN 1 (or for a more detailed treatment, my book, which revealed these and the EPA memo acknowledging they found the problem, that the alias account was created with the active participation of Carol “I didn’t use my computer for email/I had my computer hard drive and backup tapes being sought in court erased” Browner, and that it oddly was set on “auto-delete” until discovered).
And, why it might be regarding Jackson, consider the following:
That’s nice of them to say that they search and produce from her alias account(s). Now we will allow them to prove it with the assistance of judicial supervision. In fact, for reasons I explain a little below (at “*”), specifically past, exposed practices by secretive bureaucrats looking to keep public information from the public, we do not in fact know and need to confirm whether EPA has been searching and producing “Richard Windsor” email as appropriate in response to FOIA requests for Lisa Jackson email. That is a key issue relating to the discovery of this practice (along with what Browner emails existed, but her copies of which, only, were destroyed due to the account’s auto-delete setting that was only corrected in 2008, and they did not bother to try and reconstruct them).
This will come out in our suit (http://cei.org/news-releases/cei-sues-epa-administrators-secret-email-account-related-records), or our subsequent Windsor-specific FOIA request, or the investigations instigated by the House chairmen (http://science.house.gov/press-release/members-question-use-secret-email-accounts-top-obama-administration-officials).
We do have information leading us to suspect they’ve been redacting the address, improperly, when the request/production would have revealed that it was her alias, while actually acknowledging that that is not a lawful application of FOIA by releasing it (thereby acknowledging the information is not in fact properly withheld) when the production would not indicate to the requester that it was Jackson’s (attached production).
* We need to recognize the possibility that EPA was not searching the account(s): if a non-Jackson employee conducted the search, they’d not know about them; if Jackson or her aide did it, it is possible they chose not to, rationalizing that, well, the requester could not have know about the account and so couldn’t possibly have been thinking of it when asking for records from her EPA email. This would not be inconsistent with recently exposed practices of activist bureaucrats.
For example, as I explain in detail (including the problems this has caused) in The Liberal War on Transparency: Confessions of a Freedom of Information “Criminal” — irony alert: it was Jackson who called my FOIAing criminal — a major flaw with the way they implement FOIA is that the employee whose records are sought is the employee agencies task with producing potentially responsive records. They have the greatest incentive to hide records (as such, I suggest the first court we ask will conclude that all such searches are prima facie insufficient).
In one case, at NOAA, a senior official charged with leading the US involvement in the UN IPCC repeatedly failed to search for records or farm out requests for them, to staff who would possess responsive records, by stating that, really, any such records would have been produced or received by them while working for the UN (an IG affirmed, no, they weren’t). So any records in the office, well, they’d really be UN records (an IG affirmed, no, they wouldn’t). They pulled this for years, as an Inspector General acknowledged and condemned, until I called them on it. Soon, this now-former senior employee’s home computer and email account were being searched by the IT chief in response to my FOIA for “IPCC” records.
Now, with that said, note that I possess FOIA’d Jackson email showing that the Agency on at least one occasion has withheld her address. Possible reasons include, e.g., it is an alias account (“Windsor”, or other), another EPA account in her name but not her public one, or her personal account (which we’ve established this team widely also use for sensitive comms). This came in a 2010 production to Judicial Watch of several emails with Jackson’s address redacted, citing the (b)(2) exemption, claiming that the address relates to an “Internal Personnel Rule (or) Practice”. That is improper/unlawful. It is just secretive.
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Re: StuartMcL at 12:15. I recall in dealing with phish/spam there is a header which on Yahoo
looks like a gear cog which when you click (I don’t remember right or left) will display a lot of
information on the actual sender. Hope it helps.
Has everyone filed a complaint with the FBI on their tip page yet?
The more complaints they get the harder it will be to sweep this under the carpet.
We have to get smart at using the Obama tactics of community organizing and using the system against itself.
[Reply: Link to tip page would be helpfuul. — mod.]
OT, but the BOM Nino 3.4 SST index is currently 0.12 degrees and falling, for more than a week:
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/monitoring/nino3_4.png
The Nino 3 index has just fallen below zero:
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/indices.shtml
But the WUWT ENSO dial shows the value just increased from 0.5 to 0.7 degrees. Do we have a closet warmist controlling this dial?
The name ‘Richard’ in Richard Windsor could be from Richard Nixon who founded the EPA.
Because any such standard account terminology would allow quick discovery, and clogging of the account with extraneous e-mails; “more than 1.5 million in fiscal year 2012”, for example, making the account useless for everyday internal use.
Are they not capable of blocking external addresses from accessing their internal system?
Reading between the lines in Ms. Alisha’s note, it is clear to me that there are more email accounts. 3, 4, who knows?
Brad says November 20, 2012 at 12:29 pm ” … making every one into a big deal will make any issues you do find smaller… recommend moving on, this seems petty. …”
Many will understand your good intentions. But back in 1972, the weird instance of some inept burglars caught at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate office complex initially seemed like a petty thing to unravel, too.
Typical liberal dodge. Don’t answer the question asked but give a response that can only be labeled non-responsive. This is the world where everything depends on what the meaning of ‘is’ is.
An earlier post alluded to the sublime irony here… The Left championed and celebrated FOIA. Like land reform they like it less looking back from the heights. Keep pressing.
Lisa Jackson alias Richard Windsor analysis
When someone is trying to hide their identity, they may pick a name that has the same number of letters in their first name and the same number of letters in their last name. As an example, Windsor has 7 letters in the name as does Jackson. Now for the first name there’s a problem. Richard is 7 letters similar to Windsor, but Lisa has only 4 letters. The EPA email admin is very sneaky, but I think I figured it out. First I had to try and shorten Richard down to 4 letters…..thinking…..thinking…How about Dick. Ya, I think Dick would work.
/sarc off
Given the spam which internet published email ids attract, it would be interesting to know how many of those 4000 or so emails a day were actual correspondence either making a point or requiring a response. It would also be interesting to know how many of them received a simple “email received” acknowledgement, a standard response to a predefined category of query and how many actually required a personalised reply. Additinally for each case it would be interesting to know the EPA email accounts involved in the reply chain.
Presumably a well structured FOI request can reveal all this, along with a separate simple FOI: “What are the two official, government-issued email accounts in use by the Administrator?”
(maybe some of these points are covered already but the links in the story didn’t work for me)
That email from the EPA does not say that the ‘Richard Windsor’ potentially aliased address belonged to either of the EPA email systems mention in it. The EPA email does not preclude that the potentially aliased ‘Richard Windsor’ address is from a third email system outside of the EPA’s domain (like gmail or hotmail, etc.).
If the intent of that EPA email was to provide assurance to skeptics that the EPA is open in the issues at hand and can be trustworthy, then the email failed its purpose. That email worsened the EPA situation in my view.
Further parallel investigations should proceed; by the media, the US House of Representatives, CEI and the skeptical blogosphere. Maybe also investigation by the FBI if it is within its charter, I do not know if it is.
John
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.
Yes, Random Thoughts, it seems like a dodge. According to “the Agency” FOIA requests generate review of the official government assigned accounts for responsive records. The question then becomes, “Is richardwindsor@ur momisugly… the assigned official internal government account for Lisa Jackson?” If so, it presumably would be searched. If not, I assume by the wording of the email from Johnson.Alisha@ur momisugly… it would not be searched.
I’m also assuming that Johnson.Alisha@ur momisugly. . . is the ‘public’ email account. Not that it matters but I wonder what delightfully phoney name she has chosen for her internal account. If everybody at the EPA has an unrelated alias, it must be an awfully confusing. If I worked there, I’d make sure to be AngelinaJolie@ur momisugly …
Good point, John. The EPA email from Ms. Johnson is consistent with a classic misdirect, in which the question answered is not the question asked. She didn’t address at all the question of whether Lisa Jackson’s “Richard Windsor” email account was in fact licit, or an official internal EPA account belonging to Lisa Jackson (or anyone else).
John Whitman – my impression of the EPA mail was that it was taking a “protect the organisation” position, not a “protect Richard Windsor” position . .
Looks like as a standard protocol FOI requests should probably include a statement that says something inclusive like (records under all email addresses used or monitored by xx) when requesting email as part of the requests.
Larry
On question 3; HOLD THEIR FEET TO THE FIRE.
IF RICHARD WINDSOR IS THE OFFICIAL INTERNAL ACCOUNT, and they are actually answering your question, not just replying; It seems to me the EPA have substantially answered your first two questions, at least through implication.
The EPA wrote:
Moderator, if you can delete my previous post. I misspelled blockqoute.
On question 3; HOLD THEIR FEET TO THE FIRE.
IF RICHARD WINDSOR IS THE OFFICIAL INTERNAL ACCOUNT, and they are actually answering your question, not just replying; It seems to me the EPA have substantially answered your first two questions, at least through implication.
The EPA wrote:
I would suggest “Richard Windsor” is used instead of something like “headadmin.internal@internalmail.epa.gov” in order to discourage unauthorized access to the account. Any account constructed by some set method is more likely to be discovered and improperly used.
I would also suggest Richard Windsor is not listed because there is no such person there, and the designation of the account is not public knowledge. Again to discourage improper use.
I do not know the set up at EPA, but knowing the internal account’s designation could allow it to become useless by being overwhelmed by external e-mails, “… more than 1.5 million in fiscal year 2012 …”.
Again, IF RICHARD WINDSOR IS THE OFFICIAL INTERNAL ACCOUNT.
Ask them directly if it is.
Make your complaint about Lisa and the EPA here at the FBI tip web page:
https://tips.fbi.gov/
Pat Frank on November 20, 2012 at 3:51 pm
– – – – – –
Pat Frank,
I agree.
I am not being cynical right now when I suggest that email was crafted by legal council before being sent by ‘Johnson.Alisha’.
I am not cynical yet, but with any more EPA communication obliqueness I will be.
John
Robert A. Taylor, no matter how many times you write your explanation, it makes no sense to me that the EPA cannot control to limit outside access to internal email addresses. Can you explain this to me?
So she is the head of the agency and they call her <Richard…..
From a UK vernacular perspective, the juxtaposition of Richard and Head is very apt.
slow to follow on November 20, 2012 at 4:25 pm
John Whitman – my impression of the EPA mail was that it was taking a “protect the organisation” position, not a “protect Richard Windsor” position . .
– – – – –
slow to follow,
Agree.
And the EPA ‘self-protection’ is from some illusory EPA imagined bogeyman. Are they circling the wagons? Why the need for blocking / delaying / evading FOI requests?
The EPA needs a new leader and new mission with more openly verifiable mandates to look at all science and to cease the current over dependence on the biased info that is the so-called consensus science.
John
When I worked for the US federal government, I was very careful to only do official business on my .gov email address. If it was personal I did it on my hotmail account and if someone asked something work related I sent it to my .gov and answered it from there.
I had to do 5 different searches for FOIA and 2 for lawsuit discovery in my 24 years. All seven were fishing trips for classified information from leftist groups, and I think I found one document that could be released and a whole bunch of excepted documents. (intelligence sources and methods stuff – we didn’t give that stuff out even in redacted form – don’t know what they are doing now days.) The fun part was we had to show the classified stuff to the lawyer [cleared] adjudicating the request to make sure we weren’t being overzealous.
Compared to what we were dealing with, there shouldn’t be anything at the EPA that can’t be seen by anyone that asks, but they have always been a secretive bunch over at EPA. We tried to pry some chemical assays out of them once to verify some intelligence data against the science and it was like pulling teeth to get information out of them within the SAME GOVERNMENT!
Gee, what do you expect to find in these hidden emails? There’s probably just innocuous requests for information like:
Which candidate in this specific election will best protect the environment per the EPA’s mandate?
Which science authorities are advising this Democrat candidate?
In return for providing campaign backing to this Democrat candidate advised by those progressive-left activist organizations supported by EPA per EPA’s mandate to support such organizations and individuals that support and advance EPA’s mission, which industries and/or companies will be benefiting that we can invest in?
Sorry, that list wasn’t specific enough for our board. Just send us the list of companies the EPA is not planning on punishing until the next election and we’ll call it even, okay?