UPDATE: the story keeps changing, see below.
As a follow up to our story yesterday: Is the EPA running a black-ops program?
According to a report in POLITICO, EPA administrator Lisa Jackson named her internal email account “Richard Windsor” due to this:
The name came from that of a family dog when Jackson lived in East Windsor Township, N.J., an EPA official said Tuesday.
The reason for having a second email account is said to be:
The internal account exists so that Jackson’s communications with other government officials aren’t buried under the crush of emails flooding into her public account, jackson.lisap@epa.gov, which got 1.5 million emails in fiscal year 2012, EPA says. The agency says such dual- account arrangements have been standard practice since the Clinton administration, when EPA Administrator Carol Browner was first assigned two @epa.gov email addresses.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1112/84112.html#ixzz2CriKF2cD
I have to wonder though, why the EPA official who contacted me yesterday didn’t come right out and say how the dog name came about in the communication sent in response to my story?
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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.
=============================================================
Seems like they are making this up as they go along. Chris Horner expects them to comply now with this second email account.
Excuse me while I go setup a secondary email account for WUWT called “KenjiButteCounty” named after my dog. I wonder if Richard Windsor is a member of the Union of Concerned Scientists like Kenji is?
UPDATE: just for fun I did an email check.
windsor.richard@epa.gov – Result: Ok
MX record about epa.gov exists. Connection succeeded to mseive02.rtp.epa.gov SMTP. 220 mseive02.rtp.epa.gov ESMTP Postfix > HELO verify-email.org 250 mseive02.rtp.epa.gov > MAIL FROM: <check@verify-email.org> =250 2.1.0 Ok > RCPT TO: <windsor.richard@epa.gov> =250 2.1.5 Ok
UPDATE2: This LA Times story has a different account for the name “Richard Windsor”, and no mention of a dog.
Jackson’s account had the unusual name Richard Windsor because she was asked to come up with a name that meant something to her. Jackson was born in East Windsor Township, N.J.
Bet she uses the names of pets for passwords too.
She must be doing something wrong to get 1.5 million emails in one year. Woof,woof
Her dog was called Richard? Really?
So what did she shout to call the dog in at night?
> So what did she shout to call the dog in at night?
Oh dear, my dog is named Ella. I never thought that through before….
“Seems like they are making this up as they go along.”
There you go. If she loses her current job she can always get a new job as a climate “scientist’
The excuse is a total crock. Any civil servant can request a second, more private address (they don’t cost anything). Why not “ljackson_private@epa.gov”? You know why they did not do this simple approach? Because any government issued email comes under FOIA and recording rules.
Sadly for Lisa and the rest of the folks trying to hide their communications there are plenty of rules that a simple ghost email account will not save you from:
http://www2.ed.gov/policy/gen/leg/fra.html
What is important is key discussions that effect policy, safety, the economy, etc are going to be required to be retained. Period.
It will take time, but any records of government business are to be maintained….
From: buttecounty.kenji@Anthony Watts.com
To: windsor.richard@epa.gov
woof!
Tallbloke:
“Get in here, Dick”?
tallbloke said on November 21, 2012 at 6:40 am:
Hey Ricky!
Hey Ricky!
Oh Ricky, you’re so bad,
You’re so bad you make me mad.
Hey Ricky!
Hey Ricky!
Of course this ties in with the now famous caption to a cartoon from the New Yorker by Peter Steiner in July 1993:
“On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog”
I read somewhere that one method porn stars use to create their stage names is first pet’s name plus either mother’s maiden name or the name of a town once lived in. A quick search for Richard Windsor on http://www.redacted.xxx got no hits however.
Hi legal
ruff ruff, can you get Horner off my back ?, woof
pro bono please
woof
[ snip -funny, but over the top – Anthony]
tallbloke says:November 21, 2012 at 6:40 am
Her dog was called Richard? Really?
So what did she shout to call the dog in at night?
I had a neighbor thirty years ago who named his two dogs; ‘Shut Up’ and ‘Dammit’. It was hilarious to hear him calling the dogs in at night.
If “Windsor” came from Windsor Canadian – any chance the dogs nickname was Whiskey Dick?
I wonder, how many other ‘high ranking’ officials at the EPA (or elsewhere) have secondary accounts?
Is congress demanding Holder’s email from his second (or third) accounts? Do they know?
How many official accounts does our Secretary of State have?
How about energy?
In a technically open administration we could end up seeing lots of email from lots of surprise communications. I can’t wait to start cross referencing.
Let’s shake up it and see what falls out.
Let’s help them generate some “Transparency” in this administration.
cn
The dog name explanation is surely baloney. No one would ever choose an alternate email name so completely misleading for professional (albeit internal) use. The EPA is too big an organization to be able to ensure everyone knew the joke so they would know who they were really getting messages from. What if everyone else in the organization chose a misleading but plausible name? It would never be allowed.
They used to do it that way, but now there’s an app for that.
tallbloke says:November 21, 2012 at 6:40 am
Her dog was called Richard?
So what did she shout to call the dog in at night?
………
My friend Richard is known as ‘ Dick’
Miss Lisa will have to explain herself to the House Science Committee, it seems. None of this FOI BS. She has a lot to explain, and who know what else might turn up?. Should be good.
Anthony, did your sense of curiosity lead you to google “richard windsor”? The shortcut is to just go to richardwindsor.com
The agency says such dual- account arrangements have been standard practice since the Clinton administration, when EPA Administrator Carol Browner was first assigned two @epa.gov email addresses.
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Wasn’t Carol Browner the EPA administrator that ordered her hard drive erased and reformatted immediately after a judge had ordered it secured? Didn’t the white house lawyers involved claim she hadn’t yet been informed of the court order and it was all simply an unfortunate co-incidence?
Sure sounds like this current situation is simply a continuation of the same “standard practice”. Illegal it may well be, but the government enforces the laws, and thus is above the law if it chooses to be.
You know, many years ago (too many) when I was a stoodnt @college, I did some work for a friend of mine’s Dad, he was in antiques of sorts. Anyway it was he, who told me that “in my line of business you always have two three sets of books instead of two! The first set of books is for the cheques (checks) transactions , the second set is for the cash transactions, & the third set is the underthecounter set which the Taxman NEVER gets to see! I wonder, although only two, is this Ms Jackson’s “third” set of books that the public will NEVER get to see? I still say, if someone is hiding something, they have something to hide!!!
No one seems to have pointed out that Lisa Jackson’s alias, Richard Windsor, is a variation of her “porn star name” , which apocryphally is the combination of your childhood pet’s name and street name. See for example http://www.yelp.com/topic/new-york-whats-your-porn-star-name .
oops.. I see that others have observed the porn star name.