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?
============================================================
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.
“Dog ate my data” becomes “Dog hid my emails”. FYI a “Richard” is cockney rhyming slang for a turd, a piece of faecal matter, excrement; “Richard the third”.
“Joining the dots” is popular amongst alarmists these days – anyone want to make any connections?
Tallbloke asks “So what did she shout to call the dog in at night?”
FOIA! of course – “Fear of imminent arrest”.
Richard Cranium would have been a better user name.
ajstrata says: “… but any records of government business are to be maintained….”
Do you honestly believe that; after witnessing nearly four years of “the most open and transparent in history” administration? **We can’t even get a straight answer on a terrorists’ attack!**
You can bet that there are accidents {routinely} whereby backups are overwritten {prematurely reused}, misplaced {cylinder filed}, damaged {elevator shaft drop}, n00bied {training mistakes}, and the ever convenient high levels of CO2 ruined the media {tossed in fireplace}.
rayg: your
Anthony, did your sense of curiosity lead you to google “richard windsor”? The shortcut is to just go to richardwindsor.com
hmmmm…I wonder if Lisa has a copy of “50 Shades of Grey”?
That might explain the pseudonym….
So it was named after her dog.
Are we sure it wasn’t called “Hide the Decline” or just “Bull”?
I have a similar problem – I’ve opened an account called Fenton Smellyturd – it works a treat.
does not make any sense. how would any / all of the staff sent or copied on her e-mails know who it was? utter BS. this has legs.
Just for fun:
http://richardwindsor.com/
When you want to call a dog. you yell
Come, –insert dogs name–, Come.
The dog will then return.
I you do this at night in a loud voice and the neighbors can hear it, it might disturb them, or amuse them.
The dog could still be an employee of EPA as well as a member of the Union of Concerned Scientists.
ajstrata says:
November 21, 2012 at 6:52 am
It will take time, but any records of government business are to be maintained….
ajstrata, Don’t you know, rules are for the little people.
So — the entire administration uses alias-named E-Mails to communicate with each other? Apparently, al official business (as opposed to any citizen E-Mail) goes to Richard Windsor? Are there EPA and government-wide alias directories so this system will work? Do they require or suggest aliases and why and when did that go into effect?
Separately, someone should check to see if she converses with Anthony’s dog through their joint membership in the Union of Concerned Mutts.
FOIA may be blocked by a morally bankrupt administration but, according to law, private email accounts can be accessed by Police if they deem that it will “help an investigation”.
” the “180-day rule,” which says law-enforcement agencies need a mere administrative subpoena and not a court-approved warrant to access email messages older than six months. Currently, police agencies can simply say that they think a particular email is relevant to an investigation and force an Internet company to hand it over, without a judge’s OK.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2012/11/21/e-mail-privacy-debate-over-senate-communications-bill/#ixzz2CsX1KcXg“
Gosh, if only you could send the same email to more than one address, one crowded by the general public, one not so much, simply by sending a copy to both places. Oh, wait . . . .
Richard Windsor? What kind of highhat dog name is that? I liked the one John Wayne called his dog in that movie…”dog”.
My two are named Jake and Porkchop. Sorry, no last name. Not to put too fine a point on it, but I think her story doesn’t hold much water.
“Richard Cranium”
Made me laugh out loud in a meeting this am.
Still apologizing to my boss.
Will have to quit reading this at work.
OPEN LETTER #2 { A Parody }
To: Richard Windsor @ur momisugly USA’s EPA
Government officials, like you, conducting their government responsibilities using alias email accounts to communicate with each other is just soooooo cool. You are a hero to all of us who will do anything to save the planet from the bad guys who want our official communications records via FOI requests. Us supporters of secrecy in the pursuit climate change policy salute your extraordinarily opaque efforts for the ‘Cause’.
The ‘Cause’ however demands you drop the Lisa Jackson persona. It is sooooo ridiculous. We suggest you adapt an alternate persona like that of our faithful and predictable apologist hero Andy Revkin or Rodger Harrabin the acclaimed advocate of censoring sceptics in the MSM. In the future stay away from that rather odd use of persona of the opposite gender.
Signed,
Code Name,
Manno D. Mann
PS – if you are in need of private legal counsel I am well connected with lawyers and legal defense funds who support the ‘Cause’.
{Parody Ends}
John
So, to clarify. According to the EPA the purpose of this e-mail account is to enable her to communicate efficiently with other government officials. This seems to be an un-asked question here, namely: “how did she communicate to all the other government officials that she has this secondary e-mail address?”
Did she e-mail them using her number one e-mail account? If not, did she go round and tell them by some other means; post, telephone call, personal face-to-face? How then did she explained to a new person in a different government department that isn’t on the list of ‘I already know about e-mail number two’ that she has a second e-mail address? If they’re not just on a different floor as she communicate this information to them?
If there is no trail things are starting to look extremely suspicious.
And I’m assuming that all of the other government departments will now be revealing all the second e-mail accounts that their employees hold if it is, “standard practice since Clinton”.
Wattsupwiththat crew and associates.
If they will leave guys like Amb. Stevens home alone, just know they might not come to your aid if push comes to shove.
Email addresses in any government agency are controlled entirely by the IT office (whatever it may be called within that agency), which is populated exclusively by career civil servants and/or contractors. This control, for reasons of information security, far exceeds the control any agency Director (an appointee, considered by career civil servants to be an overpaid ‘temp’) may exert.
No Federal IT office I know of would permit any employee to maintain a ‘false flag’ account for security and liability reasons.
Dogs are apparently used in constructing climate models, or AGW warmists think so:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2012/01/the-dog-is-the-weather/
(Dick come, come, come NOW!
So she has/had a ‘dog’ named “Richard Windsor”? That sounds to me like puppy play:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_roleplay#BDSM_Puppy_Play
Coach Springer says: “So — the entire administration uses alias-named E-Mails to communicate with each other? Apparently, al official business (as opposed to any citizen E-Mail) goes to Richard Windsor?”
/sarc-on Why of course they do. /sarc-off
As pointed out earlier, why didn’t they setup an internal email address like: ljackson_private@epa.gov?
Or use a mail filter that routes external emails (originating from outside .gov) to a different “Inbox” folder? For example: SPAM or Junk or Sheep or Whiners
Richard Windsor the dog. Of course! It’s so much clearer in the right context. :-;