Friends of Richard

Anthony Watts reports that private email accounts scandal - the Richard Windsor affair - which is currently engulfing the US Environmental Protection Agency is about to get even wider.

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.

Read the whole thing.

Comments

[kim]

Let her introduce herself, she's Mr. Richard Windsor.
=================

[Tony Windsor]

No relation!

[Pharos]

Region 8 is Mountains and Plains - Colorado, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, Wyoming and 27 Tribal Nations

Oh no, not horsemeat ;-).

[Don Keiller]

Ready with the popcorn :-)

[dfbaskwill]

This will cause them to stockpile even more bullets.

[KnR]

Its what you expect , the culture in an organisation is set by its leaders , so when its leaders use 'iffy' e-mail accounts its not a surprise to find others will too.
I bet this in fact is quite common in areas where 'fear' of FOI means much effort is put into making it hard or impossible to enforce FOI's , for the peoples good of course .

[tomo]

KnR

these people sought to conceal their unacceptable ideological activism, intrigue, lies and bullying using public funds as civil servants - the leaders don't, in delinquent bureaucracies lead or even set the tone - it's the absence of any perceived consequences for what outsiders would see as blatant wrongdoing that nourishes the conniving control freak mindset.

Region 6 Administrator Al Armindariz lovely chap.

Translate that to the UK - you know - America sneezes and we get a cold?

[Rick Bradford]

Alternatively, you could say that a great many people in the West have been taught that the only thing that matters is their feelings, and notions such as inquiry, fact and truth are outmoded.

When personal feelings are the sole basis of someone's authenticity, then all kinds of behaviour will emerge which deviates from the now discredited notions of values and integrity.

Gleick is another obvious case that comes to mind -- his excuse for lying to Heartland was his "frustration" at their anti-Alarmist activities.

Many people have become so immature as to think that their feelings of "frustration" or "moral outrage" (Monbiot) must be assuaged at all costs and that any action is therefore justified.

[Sara Chan]

There's an article in The Hill (daily newspaper covering the U.S. Congress) about this, at
http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/e2-wire/283821-top-epa-official-used-personal-email-address

Here's what they say:

The 2010 message from Perciasepe, who is now the agency’s acting administrator, was pedestrian — he was passing along, without comment, a New York Times clip about EPA’s review of the controversial gas-drilling method called hydraulic fracturing.
...

EPA has strongly refuted claims that Jackson, who left EPA last week, used the “Richard Windsor” account to shield business from public view.

Use of a second, internal government email account by EPA administrators goes back more than a decade, and records for public and internal accounts are subject to public records requests, according to the EPA.



“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,” the agency said in a recent statement about Jackson’s secondary federal account.

[Athelstan.]

Rick Bradford @Feb 20, 2013 at 4:19 AM

Amen to that, more worryingly, you could be describing the most dangerous man on the planet and knee jerk Socialist loon - POTUS Barry Obama and he's going all green policy mania.

[Rick Bradford]

Athelstan - @Feb 20, 2013 at 9:14 AM

It's why I took the decision a number of years ago to relocate myself beyond any measurable influence from POTUS or Comrade Gillard or Krudd or Cleggeron or any of the guilt-ridden emos bent on breaking Western society by any means possible, and to live in a place where people are too busy getting on with their lives to have any truck with immature emotional whining from 'progressive' politicians.

[DennisA]

Perciasepe is another former Clinton official.

[lurker, passing through laughing]

Will these private e-mails finally yield a full disclosure of fast and furious? lol.
What is potentially more interesting will be the topics of the e-mails;
Were any of the furtive conversations regarding collusion between faux plaintiffs and the EPA? Were phony court cases or legal actions being disucussed with nice details of carve up agreements?