'Voters have a right to know. One week is absolutely more than enough time.'

-- Michael F. Flaherty,
Boston city councilor,
mayoral candidate

Mass. AG balks at call for quick probe
into deleted Boston City Hall e-mails

Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley took over Oct. 22 an investigation into whether a top aide to Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino, a Coakley ally, illegally deleted e-mails for an extended period that should have been kept as public records.

Michael F. Flaherty, a Boston city councilor who ran unsuccessfully against Menino in Boston’s mayoral race, said Coakley should have had the investigation completed before the Nov. 3 mayoral election, according to the Boston Herald.

“Voters have a right to know,” Flaherty told the Herald Oct. 23. “One week is absolutely more than enough time.”

Coakley didn’t put a timeline on the investigation, the Herald reported that day.

“The election schedule is irrelevant to our job of doing an investigation as thoroughly and fairly as possible,” she said.

Massachusetts Secretary of State William F. Galvin, who had been leading the investigation before turning it over to Coakley, said in a press statement that e-mails had been deleted “inappropriately and without permission,” The Boston Globe reported.

Galvin issued the statement when the secretary of state’s office ended its investigation and turned it over to the attorney general’s office for possible prosecution.

Before she reversed herself and decided to get involved in the investigation, Coakley had said originally that the attorney general’s office would only get involved if Galvin discovered wrongdoing in his then-ongoing investigation of the purged e-mails.

The attorney general’s office is empowered to pursue court action against violations of the Massachusetts public records laws.

Coakley, a candidate for the vacant U.S. Senate seat last held by the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat, refused Oct. 7 to answer a Boston Herald reporter’s questions about why she reversed herself and chose to enter the investigation after a month of Galvin’s prodding, according to the Herald.

Menino and other city of Boston employees tried to delay the public release of 5,018 controversial e-mails dug up after it was initially thought that they were deleted permanently by Michael J. Kineavy, Menino’s chief of policy and planning and the top aide whose e-mails are in question, in apparent violation of Massachusetts’ public records law, according to a Sept. 26 Boston Herald story. Massachusetts law states that all public records must be kept for at least two years. Violations carry a possible fine of $500 or up to a year in prison.

The city of Boston has now produced about 11,000 of Kineavy’s e-mails for public view on a city Web site.

Galvin’s office hired a technology company to search the hard drives of computers Kineavy used after a company hired by Menino’s office dug up the initial batch of e-mails.

Galvin told the Herald that he hired the second company, whose name has not been publicly released, to “restore public confidence.” That company dug up 48,000 “items,” a majority of which were e-mails, the Herald reported.

According to a letter from William Sinnott, Boston’s corporation counsel, that appears before access is allowed to Kineavy’s e-mails on the city Web site, fewer than 250 of his recovered e-mails have not been published because, Sinnott contends, they can be kept confidential under exemptions from Massachusetts’ public records law.

Newly established rules about city of Boston e-mails also are announced on the site. One rule requires city employees to keep all e-mails sent or received for three years.

The Boston Globe revealed Oct. 6 that a second computer had been discovered to have been used by Kineavy even though he had said he used only one computer during the time the e-mails in controversy were generated.

The Herald reported that in a Sept. 25 meeting at Boston City Hall after business hours, Menino’s press office announced that the recovered e-mails would be made available to the Herald only then and for a viewing period of 30 minutes, as city lawyers looked on.

The e-mails given to reporters included only those exchanged by Kineavy with other city employees that were found in their e-mail archives and none that Kineavy sent or received from people outside City Hall, the Globe reported.

Kineavy took a voluntary, unpaid leave of absence from his job the day of the revelation about the second computer, the Globe reported Oct. 7. Kineavy was still allowed to work on Menino’s re-election campaign, however.

Galvin told the Globe that the Massachusetts supervisor of records wrote Menino officials an e-mail Oct. 2, characterizing their responses to Galvin’s office as “insulting and unacceptable.’’

Flaherty decried what he called a “cover-up and/or obstruction of justice’’ by the Menino administration, the Globe reported.

“It’s common sense here that if they had nothing to hide, they wouldn’t be acting this way,’’ he said in a Globe report. “This is about Mayor Menino and the culture at City Hall. The fish rots from the head down.’’

Controversy over Kineavy’s e-mails arose after the Globe initiated a public records request for e-mails sent or received between Oct. 1, 2008, and March 31 of this year by Kineavy.

The Globe reported that it assumed that those e-mails contained information about public corruption cases against a disgraced former Massachusetts senator, Dianne Wilkerson, a Boston Democrat, and Boston City Councilor Chuck Turner.

The request yielded only 18 e-mails, although the Globe reported that it had information that 300 e-mails had been permanently deleted. Kineavy later admitted that he had been permanently deleting e-mails for five years, saying that he was a “creature of habit” and that he assumed that the e-mails were being saved on City Hall backup servers.

In light of the potential public-records violation, Galvin ordered Sept. 14 that the computer used by Kineavy be seized and that forensics experts be brought in to try to retrieve the deleted e-mails.

After the forensic experts performed their search for the purged e-mails, City Hall officials confirmed that a second computer was used by Kineavy during the time e-mails requested by the Globe were generated, according to an Oct. 6 Globe story.

Officials told the Globe that the computer in question was replaced with another after Kineavy complained that it operated too slowly. That contradicts an earlier assertion by Sinnott, the city’s top lawyer, that Kineavy had used the same computer for the past two years, the Globe reported.

It also noted that Kineavy asked for the replacement computer only five days after the Globe requested the e-mails in question.

Sinnott told the Globe that Kineavy has told him that he did not remember getting a new computer.

Pamela H. Wilmot, executive director of the watchdog group Common Cause of Massachusetts, told the Globe: “It certainly raises questions when the timing between the records request and the request for a new computer follow each other so closely, especially in light of the lack of disclosure of receipt of a new computer. Getting a new computer isn’t something one easily forgets.’’

The Globe reported that the second computer “may contain the bulk of the e-mail subpoenaed by federal authorities and formally requested by the Globe.”

The federal subpoena was issued in the public corruption case involving Wilkerson and Turner.

The subpoena sought copies of any correspondence Kineavy had with Wilkerson, Turner and their aides between March 2007 and April 2008, the Globe reported.

This report was written from published reports by Bret Silverberg, a graduate student at the Northeastern University School of Journalism and member of the Bulletin staff.

POSTED 11/5/09

'The election schedule is irrelevant to our job of doing an investigation as thoroughly and fairly as possible.'

-- Martha Coakley,
Massachusetts
attorney general