Posted on 11/20/2012 3:14:33 AM PST by tobyhill
House Republicans are investigating allegations that EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson and other high-ranking agency officials have been conducting officials business with email aliases or secret accounts to avoid scrutiny from agency watchdogs and the public.
The House Science, Space and Technology Committee is leading the investigation and has asked Jackson to turn over information connected to the email account “Richard Windsor” – one of the alleged alias accounts.
The committee has sent letters to White House lawyers and the EPA inspector general asking them into investigate the allegations and report on their findings by the end of the month.
The Daily Caller reported first that Jackson was using an email alias, based on research by Competitive Enterprise Institute fellow Christopher Horner.
He says the agency’s use of secret email accounts dates back to the Clinton administration and then-Administrator Carol Browner.
“You remember Ms. Browner, the lady who suddenly ordered her computer hard drive reformatted and backup tapes erased, hours after a federal court issued a ‘preserve’ order … that her lawyers at the Clinton Justice Department insisted they hadn’t yet told her about?” Horner said in the Daily Caller story.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Sure, they might have trouble getting that through Harry Reid or Obama, but it would certainly be a good talking point for 'our side' ~ and besides, no federal government appointee or employee imagines he or she has any privacy when it comes to those two topics ~ they don't even have privacy regarding what they are paid, although the existing terrorist threat did allow their agencies to restrict information about where they sit inside buildings.
Lisa Jackson and other high-ranking agency officials have been conducting officials business with email aliases or secret accounts to avoid scrutiny from agency watchdogs and the public.
I suspect this has become standard operating procedure for most of the Feds at this point. Wasn’t Petraeus using gmail?
House of representatives just needs to cut off all monies to anything to do with Odumbo. he way i is going i t is like Feed the Pig. Odumbo Administraion is like a Supersized Pig on steroids that is on a feeding frenzy and can get away from the trough.
wish I could find that sow with piglets sucking on the teats - change it to the taxpayers and and all the piglets sucking the life out of them.
This is actually illegal but nobody will enforce the law.
We are not supposed to use non-government email while at work. I don't know if that's for all federal employees, or just the DOD... but that already is the rule.
But are people maimed for doing that?
As a practic matter I have 4 or 5 email addresses and can access them on my phone anytime I want. Nothing prevents someone from creating an anonymous email account and writing to another anonymous email account. It’s all likely to come out if the SHTF but if not, it’s business as “unusual”
You can have as many personal emails as you want. But when you’re a government employee, you can’t use personal email to conduct government business — not only is it a security violation, it also is an illegal workaround from the oversight rules.
Stopping it is another story.
But, who would pay attention to an e-mail from Lisa_Jackson@gmail.com?
I think what happened here is that the e-mails came from Richard_Windsor@epa.gov, not Lisa_Jackson@epa.gov.
This is a practice that predates electronic mail by the way. It happens for a variety of reasons. The administrator sends an e-mail or even a snail mail from a non-existent employee.
Yeah, I ah, know it’s illegal, so is getting on TV and lying about Bengazi. We’re not dealing with an administration that cares about the law or they wouldn’t have secret email accounts that thwart FOI law in the first place.
Have the committee subpoena the accounts associated with the relevant IP addresses. Google is more than willing to give up everything about us poor peons to the government. It’s about time this works to our advantage for a change.
I think what happened here is that the e-mails came from Richard_Windsor@epa.gov, not Lisa_Jackson@epa.gov.
This is a practice that predates electronic mail by the way. It happens for a variety of reasons. The administrator sends an e-mail or even a snail mail from a non-existent employee.
I hadn't heard that. Do you have a source for this? If true, it would be really easy to trace things out and identify others who are doing the same thing by any competent tech.
My suspicion is that the House committee may already have the emails. Now it's a matter of getting Jackson to hand them over to show her cooperation even though the committee already may know what's in them.
if you maim them enough they won’t be able to use those cellphones!
Have you seen any maiming as yet? Even back as far as the first Bush administration?
For this particular story, I don’t have one....other than the fact that Richard Windsor is not identified. Don’t you find that suspicious? If you were a reporter, wouldn’t you explain somewhere in the story what Richard Windsor’s position was (Chief of Staff to Lisa Jackson, Program Manager, etc.?)
For the practice in general, check the Washington Post about 22 years ago. I don’t remember for certain whether the story focused on the public or the private sector.
Go to epa.gov — click on “Working With Us.”
Go to Staff Directory. Enter Windsor as the Last Name. Click on “Search.”
The request will return no results — so there is no employee by that name, if indeed there ever was.
Enter Jackson as the Last Name. The request will return 62 records, one of whom is the Agency Administrator herself — so it’s not like the top staff are not listed.
Right now the House doesn’t have to go through anyone. Simply subpoena every email ever sent on those “other” accounts. We need more whistleblowers, too. Why not incentivize them with a bounty?
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