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Vitter: President failing to deliver on promises of transparency
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The reported use of secret email accounts by Obama administration officials violates the president’s promise of transparency, Louisiana Republican Sen. David Vitter The recent reports that top Obama administration officials have been using secret email accounts to conduct official business is just another example of the Obama administration failing to deliver on its promise of being the most transparent administration in history, says Louisiana Republican Sen. David Vitter.
“While the President promised transparency, he and the people he chose to lead various sections of his Administration are very clearly failing to deliver,” said Vitter.
“The release of the infamous ‘Richard Windsor’ email alias documents has led to the discovery of even more, widespread inappropriate record-keeping practices within the EPA and multiple other Agencies,” he added. “At the end of the day this is about the President’s leadership, and thus failure to deliver on yet another promise.”
The Associated Press reported that some in President Obama’s Cabinet have been using secret email accounts, including Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, for internal communication. The AP learned this through government records requests that were sent it upon learning that the former Environmental Protection Agency head had been using an alias email account for internal communications.
Vitter and California Rep. Darrell Issa have been investigating records practices within the EPA after it was revealed that top agency officials were using non-official email accounts to conduct official business.
“EPA contends that its ‘policy’ is readily available and well understood by staff; however, we have learned that regional employees are not properly trained or even informed of EPA’s records keeping policies,” wrote Sen. Vitter and Rep. Issa. “In fact, the Committees discovered that [Region 8 Administrator James] Martin regularly used his personal e-mail account to correspond with individuals and groups outside of EPA regarding Agency business and was not aware of EPA’s policy against it.”
Last year, the Daily Caller News Foundation reported that former EPA administrator Lisa Jackson was using an alias email account under the name Richard Windsor. It was then discovered that at least two other top EPA officials were using private email accounts to conduct official business.
This information was revealed to the DC News Foundation by Competitive Enterprise Institute Senior Fellow Chris Horner, who was informed of this by anonymous EPA officials.
“The internal account is an everyday, working email account of the administrator to communicate with staff and other government officials,” the agency contended, adding that the large volume of emails sent to the administrator makes “the internal email account is necessary for effective management and communication between the administrator and agency colleagues.”
Earlier this year, the Daily Caller News Foundation reported that former EPA Region 8 administrator James Martin used his private “me.com’ email account to correspond with environmental activists. after this was revealed, Vitter and Issa launched an investigation into Martin’s email activity and argued he may have been trying to skirt federal transparency laws. Martin subsequently resigned “in part because of the open investigation about his use of a non-official email account to conduct official business,” according to Vitter.
EPA email and records rules instruct employees to “not use any outside e-mail account to conduct official Agency business.”
Subsequent emails released by the EPA showed that acting EPA Administrator Bob Perciasepe used a private email account to conduct official business using a non-official “perciasepe.org” email account.
Sen. Vitter also released more emails from Jackson’s alias email account — Richard Windsor — which showed that she was using the account to correspond with environmentalists.
“EPA has shown an absolute disregard for transparency with their email practices, but this one is pretty bizarre,” said Vitter. “We also know now that Lisa Jackson used the alias ‘Richard Windsor’ to correspond outside of the EPA, including with environmental activists.”
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