EPA officials say the agency wasn’t trying to hide anything by giving Administrator Lisa Jackson a secondary email address to use when corresponding with other government officials.
But the name she chose to use — “Richard Windsor” — has triggered an inadvertent ruckus for an agency already under fire from conservatives.
The name came from that of a family dog when Jackson lived in East Windsor Township, N.J., an EPA official said Tuesday.
Could someone in East Windsor Township, NJ, please ask Lisa Jackson's old neighbors what her dog's name was? Seriously, who the hell names their dog "Richard" and why would this country make that person Administrator of the EPA? I should start an office pool on what people think the canine Richard Windsor's middle name is going to turn out to be.
We'll come back to Richard Windsor,
as we always do, but, first, that Politico article has this gem [emphasis added]:
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.
How dare Politico besmirch the honor of former EPA Administrator Carol Browner by implying that she's a liar.
You'll recall from the Daily Caller:
“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 told TheDC News Foundation. “The one who said it’s all good because she didn’t use her computer for email anyway? That one.”
So during the Clinton administration Browner justified the destruction of public records by claiming that she didn't use her computer for government email and therefore no public records would be destroyed. Note that backup tapes were erased, too, so it stands to reason that Browner's claim was that not only did she not use her computer for email, but that she did not, in fact, use government email at all; hence, she was not, to her mind, ordering public records to be destroyed when she ordered her computer to be reformatted and, by implication, backup tapes to be destroyed. Yet, today we learn that she had a second, clandestine account.
What was the name on Carol Browner's sockpuppet email account?
I believe that the EPA's Richard Windsor account was created during the Clinton Administration. Was it used by Carol Browner? Was it used by George W. Bush's EPA Administrator? If not, then we have a dormant account that may have been available to political operatives and activists of the party out of power during the Bush presidency, if I'm right about the account having been created twelve or more years ago.
When was the EPA's "Richard Windsor" account created? Who was granted access to it? And when was each custodian granted that access?
Getting back to "Richard Windsor".... The Politico has implied that Lisa Jackson has claimed that she had a dog named "Richard" when she lived in East Windsor Township. The EPA acknowledges that there's a "Richard Windsor" account used by Lisa Jackson. Let's return to
the dead Richard Windsor that I wrote about when first taking an interest in this story:
Richard Windsor was a Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) enforcement attorney who, in 1997, began working for Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). In an article announcing Windsor's new job staffing a PEER sponsored environmental hotline, he had this to say:
``Once upon a time, Florida [had] an environmental agency that tried to enforce environmental laws,'' Windsor said. ``That's not the case now.''
Windsor was an attorney in a court case in 2000 involving Florida's DEP. That same year, he corresponded with then EPA director Carol Browner. We know that because of footnote #39 on page 20 of a 2004 letter from Eric Huber of the Sierra Club addressed to Michael Leavitt of the EPA. We know that Richard L. Windsor was an attorney involved in a 2003 case involving Florida's DEP.
And, sadly, The Florida Bar News reported that Richard Lee Windsor shuffled off his mortal coil on December 7th, 2008.
It turns out that the deceased environmental lawyer, Richard Windsor, worked with Carol Browner when Browner was head of Environmental Regulation in Florida. The article about the PEER sponsored environmental hotline notes: "Windsor and Medina worked for 11 years as state regulators." So, Windsor would've worked at DEP from 1986 to 1997 (roughly).
Browner was Secretary of Environmental Regulation for Florida from 1991 to 1993.
The deceased Windsor was involved in an environmental case documented in Don Corace's
Government Pirates: The Assault on Private Property Rights--and How We Can Fight It.
During the trial, Ocie and his son were painted as dangerous criminals who ignored the goverment's cease-and-desist orders and knowingly polluted the nation's waters.
Richard Windsor, an assistant general counsel for the DEP.
even compared Ocie to Humpty-Dumpty who was known
for creating his own version of reality. (pp 138-139)
Ocie Mills and his son, Casey, served terms in federal prison. In 1993 while trying to have the federal conviction removed from their records, a federal judge ruled that Ocie's property was "probably never a wetland for the purposes of the Clean Water Act." (
Ibid. p 140).
In 1996 one of the jurors, Quentin Wise, contacted Ocie. The juror alleged that Ocie was railroaded:
...the jury foreman, Thomas J. Smith, had told jurors during the trial that his sons worked for the DEP, that he had learned that Ocie had threatened officers with a gun in the past, and portrayed him as a terrible polluter. Wise confessed that he and the other jurors had been intimidated by Smith and that they had agreed to convict Ocie and his son. (Ibid. pp 140-141.)
In short, the deceased Richard Windsor is a hero of enviro-fascists everywhere.
I said earlier that I believe that the EPA's Richard Windsor account was created during the Clinton Administration. I've shown that Clinton EPA Administrator Carol Browner would have known the deceased Richard Windsor. I've mentioned that Browner was once Secretary of Environmental Regulation for Florida. And, now, I'll note that she was Senator Al Gore's legislative director from 1988 to 1991. In fact,
Wikipedia notes that Browner "became known as a Gore protégé."
With Al Gore's close loss in Florida in the 2000 Presidential election, is it that far-fetched to suspect that Browner had a clandestine email account setup for an activist environmental lawyer in Florida named Richard Windsor? The key questions that remain for the EPA:
When was the EPA's "Richard Windsor" account created? Who was granted access to it? And when was each custodian granted that access?
Update: Thanks to
Instapundit for the link! Checkout my other coverage of this story especially my interview with
Chris Horner of the Competitive Enterprise Institute who wrote
The Liberal War on Transparency and got the ball rolling on this story. Please consider hitting
my tip jar or buying one of the books mentioned here--that puts a little money in my pocket at no additional cost to you. Thanks!
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