From a press release:
Vitter: New Richard Windsor Emails Show EPA’s Transparency Problem More Widespread
New emails show acting Administrator Perciasepe used non-official email to conduct official business. EPA Region 8 Administrator, who is resigning this week, is being investigated for the same problem.
(Washington, D.C.) – U.S. Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), the top Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee (EPW), today released findings from the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) second tranche of Richard Windsor emails. The release shows that acting Administrator Bob Perciasepe used a private email account to conduct official business, similar to Region 8 Administrator, James Martin, who is the subject of an ongoing investigation launched by Vitter and U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee (OGR) Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.).
Sen. Vitter also announced today that he has learned Martin is resigning this week, less than two weeks after hiring legal counsel and following a letter from Vitter and Issa. Read more about Vitter and Issa’s investigation into Martin here.
“Region 8 Administrator Martin is likely resigning this week in part because of the open investigation about his use of a non-official email account to conduct official business,” said Vitter. “Now we know that Lisa Jackson’s acting replacement, Bob Perciasepe, appears to have been doing the same thing to dodge the agency’s mandatory recordkeeping policy. EPA owes us all some answers about their absolute disregard for transparency, especially from their acting administrator or any potential nominee to be administrator.”
In documents obtained by Senate EPW and House OGR committees, Region 8 Administrator Martin used a non-official, me.com, e-mail account, which may have been an attempt to circumvent the Federal Records Act, the Freedom of Information Act, and Congressional oversight. The Richard Windsor email release shows that Bob Perciasepe was using a non-official, “perciasepe.org,” email account, too.
You can find an example of Perciasepe’s non-official email on page 470 at the following link to the EPA’s second release of Richard Windsor emails: http://www.epa.gov/epafoia1/docs/Second-Release-Part-O.pdf .
“There’s a lot of information in these emails that warrant further investigations, but it is clear that EPA continues to abuse exemptions under FOIA law with significant redactions of information to avoid transparency,” Vitter added.
EPA instructs its employees to “not use any outside e-mail account to conduct official Agency business.” However, the documents obtained suggest that Administrator Martin regularly used a non-official e-mail account to conduct official business, and acting Administrator Perciasepe may be doing the same.
-30-
2/19/13 2:07 PM EST via Politico email alert
EPA Region 8 Administrator James Martin has resigned from his post, effective Friday, Feb. 22, EPA spokeswoman Alisha Johnson confirmed to POLITICO. But she denied the allegation from EPW Ranking Member Sen. David Vitter that the decision came in response to his discovery that Martin had used a personal account for his government duties. Johnson said Martin’s decision to leave is for “personal reasons.” Regarding Vitter’s email claims, the agency says that “the Regional Administrator does not use his personal email account to conduct official business. That Mr. Martin responded to one email sent to his personal email account to confirm a meeting that appears on his official government calendar does not alter that fact.” EPA says the email was produced for Vitter when, “In an abundance of caution and to be fully transparent, the Regional Administrator searched his personal email account and produced any email that contained the term the ‘Environmental Defense Fund,’ which are the emails cited by Senator Vitter and Chairman Issa in their inquiry,” the agency’s statement says. “In producing these documents, the EPA and the Regional Administrator have gone beyond any legal requirements in our efforts to ensure full transparency.”
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trumblon says:
February 19, 2013 at 12:26 pm
The charge is that he used a personal email account for official business. The content of the email is irrelevant.
Kevin Kilty wrote (3:55pm):
“There is one too many url . . .” Thanks, sir, you’re correct. I realized that after I clicked onto my citations in the original post in order to make sure they were right. Another mistake I made was in citing the Zubrin article’s URL, which I should have posted as:
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/316555/dethrone-epa-robert-zubrin
In any event, I’m glad you were able to read the article from PEER. I first found it referenced in Delingpole’s article “Lisa Jackson: doing for the US economy what King Herod did for babycare”
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/9785837/lisa_jackson_doing_for_the_us_economy_what_king_herod_did_for_babycare
I apologize for typing too fast. Exposing today’s malthusians revs me up, and makes me want to go out and buy a few filet mignons or T-bones–the current American food target of Lisa Jackson, Maurice Strong, and Algore, et al. I think they should focus on their own carbon footprints.
When you work for a government agency you are NOT allowed to aggregate your email accounts. You are NOT allowed to access your private email account while at work. There is no innocent excuse for this kind of behavior. Any, and I mean any, email sent in an official capacity from a private email account is a breach. And as they say, where there’s smoke there may be fire. Closing your eyes, shoving your fingers in your ears, and singing “la la la” is not an appropriate response. An investigation must take place to see how widespread the problem is.
This is a nice piece of misdirection by the EPA. The issue here is not whether this particular official used a private email address to transact EPA business. The big issue is that this individual was aware that the EPA administrator and other officials in the EPA were using fake email addresses in violation of the law and did nothing about it. It would appear that this practice was widespread within the executive level leadership of EPA. I would give this guy a get out of jail free card in return for his testimony if I were the congressman.
Right now, EPA is going through the emails and producing only those whose content is non-controversial and hoping the controversy will blow over. But, once the first sordid email is found (and it will be) this becomes a major scandal.
Alan Watt, Climate Denialist Level 7 says:
February 19, 2013 at 12:17 pm
Theo Goodwin says:
February 19, 2013 at 11:41 am
An occasional cross-contamination of work/personal emails does not constitute a pattern of evasion or obstruction. However to maintain claims of FOI compliance, the EPA would have to insist that where mixing of personal and work emails does occur, anyone subject to an FOI request must search personal email as well.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
No, it means very sloppy work habits, lack of a duty of care or intentionally leaving certain correspondence off the EPA serves. I presently have over a half dozen email accounts that I use for different purposes. It is important that they are regularly backed up and archived and they are. And if I use a webmail address to conduct business then I cc the email to my work address so it can be archived in the proper account. In a good system, the emails can be filed by project or classification for archiving and retrieval. My company and many companies and agencies I have worked with do this routinely, WIth a background in administration of computer systems and a number of friends in the IT arena, I find it hard to believe any of the EPA outside email accounts are accidental.
While I agree in principal with, Climate Denialist Level 7, That inadvertant cross-contamination of personal and employment Emails should not result in the end-of-career scienarios, my impression is that this is a standard operating proceedure. If the cross-contamination was truely inadvertant, wouldn’t a rational person forward the wayward email from his/her personal account to his/her employment account, then respond to the sender through the offical channels? It’s far better to use employer email for personal than vica versa when your a public servant subject to transperency laws.
Is it useful to replace the good ol’ boys with the good new boys?
Paul Penrose says:
February 19, 2013 at 5:14 pm
That’s a rather broad claim. There are many governemnt agencies; can you provide substantiation fthat this prohibition applies to all US government employees?
Technically, for most (private) empoyers I’ve had, one is not supposed to use one’s work phone for private business, but the fact is it happens all the time. Employees have private lives, and household emergencies. Especially before the days of cell phones the only way to find out the toilets were backing up at your house was by a phone call to work. Is that an infraction according to most policy manuals? — yes. Does anyone get disciplined for it? — only those whose employers were already looking for a reason to discipline them. It is a long standing principle of criminal law that you must establish criminal intent for a technical infraction to be a crime. That we have gotten away from that principle in recent times is not progress.
Keep your eye on the really important ball here: were people at the EPA using private email accounts to transact EPA business while evading oversight and FOI requirements? If you can establish that then come down hard on the offenders. Don’t waste credibility by inflating someone sending a copy of a newspaper article or press release to a personal email into a federal case.
As I admitted, I only scanned through some of the referenced PDF file of emails. If you can find in there instances where James Martin engaged in substantive policy or other official business using his private email account, I will cheerfully admit I’m wrong. Based on what I have examined personally, I just don’t see it.
@Theo Goodwin:
I suspect I am at least as familiar with the technical and legal issues surrounding work email as you — I have to be certified once a year as a condition of my employment. I make the assumption that everything I commit to email, whether personal or work, can be discovered, in practice if not in law.
My point remains: don’t assume everyone at the EPA is acting out of nefarious motives just because they have and use personal email accounts. People with company cars still have to drop off/pick up their dry cleaning; this does not make them guilty of misappropriatiing company resources.
Just because people who write regulations do not understand the complexities of real life does not mean the rest of us must be similiarly stupid. Call out people when they actually do something wrong, not just because they have put a toe across some line which only a mindless bureaucrat thinks is significant. We need more common sense in the world, not more rigid enforcement of bureaucratic fiats.
Bottom line for people who don’t want to read and consider all that I said above: find me a substantive and intentional violation of transparency and accountability rules and I’ll join your call for blood. From the article posted here, in the case of James Martin I just don’t see it.
“That Mr. Martin responded to one email sent to his personal email account to confirm a meeting that appears on his official government calendar does not alter that fact.”
Well, that should be easy to confirm.
EPA facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/EPA
They would LOVE to hear from you
New Acting Director, Bob Perciasepe, also implicated in using private email for official business: http://www.facebook.com/EPAadmin
Hey Mr Pull My Finger! ” You are all a bunch of flat-earth, racist, mouth breathing, trogolodytes that beat your wives and kick your dogs! ”
Ha ha ha, Are you aware that the very thing that CAGW hangs on are computer models based on a FLAT EARTH. SO you are flipping, as all the warmists always do. And Racist? Lol where does that one come from, weird? Mouth breathing? lol, yes CO2 comes out of your mouth too! Trogolodytes? Lol that is what the warmists want you to be, you know live in a cave and burn dung for fuel. Beat your wives and kick your dogs? Your nuts, and a loony to boot.
This guy is joking, right?
I can see there being a lot of jobs at the EPA (and other gov dept) that no one will want no matter how much they pay.
James Bull
jeff 5778 wrote (12:29 pm):
“You betcha!” Well, here’s a great article written by–you guessed it–Hugh Betcha!
http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/50494
Alan Watt, Climate Denialist Level 7 says:
February 19, 2013 at 2:51 pm
“From the text posted here I do not see that this pattern extends to James Martin in particular. The actual story text says:……”
My statement was that entirely too many government officials in this administration have lost sight of whom they serve. So even if there is no pattern specifically for James Martin, the entire culture that prevails in Washington these days makes everyone suspect. In that environment one should know to stay clean as a whistle to avoid being part of the problem. Whether intentional or not, I for am sick of these people doing things wrong. No more excuses, no more exceptions, do it right all the time or be gone. It’s just that simple.
Lots of news article clippings on the email pdf.
Maybe the emails are the data gathering for the “mini war room.”
From Page 303 of pdf. (original article clipped from the daily beast)
“Aware of the company’s PR plans, Jackson and her people put together a mini war room. A
handful of staffers were assigned to track every statement issued by Luminant—both in the press and on the web site the company had set up to fight the rule—and issue a point-by-point response. Similarly, during Jackson’s subcommittee appearance, when Rep. Barton cited Luminant as a victim of EPA overreach, the administrator came back at him with details of the company’s troubled history.”
There does seem to be some denialists of wrong doing on the part of the EPA posting on this blog. I ask of them but one question, why are people resigning if they have done nothing wrong.
We are talking well paid jobs here, money for jam so to speak. They are running — why?
These people at the EPA … they’re bringing the EPA into disrepute.
trumblon says: “My boss George Soros paid me to come here and wave my hands; later I have to go and kill some kittens who are needlessly emitting carbon dioxide.”
Rattus Norvegicus says: “I also got the same talking points from my eco activist group and am here to defend the poor little bureaucrats from you nasty deniers”
Thanks guys. If you had not come here tp post I would have had to go to DeSmogBlog to get the truthiness.
To Alan Watt:
E-mail retention polices for Federal agencies are covered under
44 U.S.C. Chapter 31, for one example. Also, NIST Special Publication
800-53A, commonly adopted as a framework by civilian Federal
agencies under the Federal Information Systems Management Act
(FISMA) would repay your study. General Records Schedule 24
also specifies e-mail as being covered as relevant documents.
Hey, it’s a Nixon-era agency. You expected it to be non-criminal?
Wanna buy some seashore property in Jersey?
The Obama EPA is certainly one of the worst in its history. But I think what is going on is the zealots are all bailing out because they are fed up with the Obama hypocrisy. This administration cares only power. Its core beliefs are not apparent in my humble opinion. I doubt they are global warming hence, Jackson bailing out. This administration is all about central planning. Martin was actually a man with some ethics and I think he just couldn’t take being told what to do by the White House any longer. Just an observation from an EPA insider….
Subversion. Democracy to these guys is “the ends justifies the means.”