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11 US Federal Agencies Use Secret Email Accounts
The Truth Behind The News
)
Susanne Posel
Occupy Corporatism
June 5, 2013
Mainstream media has reported that President Obama has appointed specific political persons to use “secret government e-mail accounts . . . to prevent their in-boxes from being overwhelmed with unwanted messages.”
Kathy Sebelius, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) is among those persons of interest with a secret e-mail account ([email protected]) which is obviously separate from the public e-mail address: [email protected].
Donald Berwick, former haed of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services (CMMS) and Gary Cohen, deputy administrator for implementing health insurance reform have secret e-mail accounts not made public.
How many members of the Obama administration who have and use secret e-mail accounts is unknown.
More agencies that have been identified (although not admitted) as using alternate e-mail accounts are:
• Pentagon
• Department of Veterans Affairs
• Department of Transportation
• Department of US Treasury
• Department of Justice
• Department of Housing and Urban Development
• Department of Homeland Security
• Department of Commerce and Agriculture
The Associated Press (AP) has suggested that this may explain why requested made under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) are not responded to in a timely manner or in some cases even acknowledged.
AP stated: “The secret e-mail accounts complicate an agency’s legal responsibilities to find and turn over e-mails in response to congressional or internal investigations, civil lawsuits or public records requests because employees assigned to compile such responses would necessarily need to know about the accounts to search them. Secret accounts also drive perceptions that government officials are trying to hide actions or decisions.”
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of Labor (DoL) appears to be among those who have separate work e-mail accounts to separate employee’s personal and professional e-mailing needs. This practice is discouraged but is justifiable because of the federal governmental agencies that would need to preserve records.
Lisa Jackson, former administrator of the EPA used an e-mail account under the name “Richard Windsor” to distract from disclosing information to the public.
Jackson stated that those e-mails were exposed when requested. Ironically, how the public was supposed to know about the secret e-mail account in order to request those e-mails was not explained by Jackson.
In particular, the EPA was exposed by the Competitive Enterprise Institute in 2012.
In fact, secret email accounts facilitate deception when an investigation into the actions of a federal agency is being conducted. This is an easy way for those agencies in question to hide information that would not be provided to the investigators.
Kel McClanahan, executive director of National Security Counselors, said : “What happens when that person doesn’t work there anymore? He leaves and someone makes a request (to review emails) in two years. Who’s going to know to search the other accounts? You would hope that agencies doing this would keep a list of aliases in a desk drawer, but you know that isn’t happening.”
The post Susanne Posel.
Source: http://www.occupycorporatism.com/11-us-federal-agencies-use-secret-email-accounts/
