MEET RICHARD WINDSOR
Top administration officials are using secret email accounts and other gimmicks to hide taxpayer-funded activities from public review. It makes it virtually impossible to carry out FOIA requests.
In this way the EPA and other government agencies can act in complete secrecy. For example, EPA administrator Lisa Jackson used the fake name, Richard Windsor, among others, on hidden email accounts to communicate on official matters. If a FOIA request is issued, how would they know they had to check Richard Windsor‘s emails?
Chris Horner, senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and author of the new book “The Liberal War on on Transparency,” told the Daily Caller that this information was given to him by two fairly senior EPA officials.
Mr. Horner reminds us of the first act of non-transparency by this administration when Carol Browner resigned. She was the former director of the Obama White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy and Bill Clinton’s EPA administrator.
“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.”
The actions by White House officials appear to be aimed at evading transparency laws. The House science committee sent a letter on November 16th to several White House officials, including Jackson, demanding answers. Not one Democrat signed the letter.
Jackson has so far said that Richard Windsor was the name of a family dog and evasion was not the intent.
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