Mayor Adrian Fenty idolizes John F. Kennedy; he often invokes the iconic president’s name when talking about how he would like to be seen as a chief executive.
But when it comes to maintaining the paper trail of communications within his government, Fenty is better compared to Richard Nixon.
Love him or hate him, Nixon will be remembered by many for the missing 18 minutes in the tapes of his White House conversations that might have further incriminated him in the Watergate scandal.
Nixon resigned in disgrace anyway to avoid impeachment proceedings, but the gap in the tapes leaves a hole in our understanding of what happened at a crucial moment in our history.
Now we come to find out that Fenty’s government has been routinely erasing e-mails from its system.
According to affidavits in a case brought against the city by the police union, e-mails to and from city workers have a short life span.
Robert Mancini, a program officer with the Office of the Chief Technology Officer, said the city keeps tapes of all e-mails for eight weeks, “after which the tapes were recycled and copied over.”
My colleague Bill Myers got his hands on the affidavit and opened it up for public inspection. Not a pretty sight. Imagine, for starters, that Mayor Fenty is cruising along in his Smartcar one afternoon, and his BlackBerry vibrates.
One of his running buddies has just sent him a message. He has a construction company and wants to know whether he should bid on a city project.
Fenty writes back: Do it, I’ll make sure you get the deal.
A year later investigators start a probe into bid rigging — but the e-mail went poof, and the paper trail ends.
Or let’s say a top lieutenant in Police Chief Cathy Lanier’s office gets stopped for running a red light.
Upon investigation, police find cocaine in the car. Lanier’s top deputy asks in an e-mail: What should we do? Lanier responds: Make it go away.
Eight weeks later, technicians cleanse the system, and the paper trail ends.
These are fictitious examples. I am in no way suggesting Fenty would break the law, and surely Lanier would not cover up an investigation.
You might wonder why any public official would commit embarrassing or incriminating words to an e-mail.
To which I remind you of South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford’s panting notes to his paramour, which are now public.
Mancini has since “clarified” his comments and said the city does keep one backup tape.
But his comments under oath seem unassailable to police union chief Kris Baumann, who told me: “He made it absolutely clear the city does not and will not keep these records.”
Last year Fenty made it clear he wanted to kill office e-mails, but the D.C. Council objected to the routine destruction of the public record.
Fenty said he changed his mind, withdrew his proposal and said he would preserve office e-mails. For proof, let’s check the e-mail traffic — unless it has been erased.
E-mail Harry Jaffe at [email protected].
