WASHINGTON — Some of President Barack Obama’s political appointees are using secret government e-mail accounts to conduct official business, The Associated Press found, a practice that complicates agencies’ legal responsibilities to find and turn over e-mails under public records requests and congressional inquiries.
White House spokesman Jay Carney on Tuesday acknowledged the practice and said it made eminent sense for Cabinet secretaries and other high-profile officials to have what he called alternative e-mail accounts that wouldn’t fill with unwanted messages. Carney said all their e-mail accounts, public and otherwise, were subject to congressional oversight and requests by citizens under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act.
“There’s nothing secret,” Carney said.
The AP reviewed hundreds of pages of government e-mails released under the federal open-records law and couldn’t independently find instances when material from any of the secret accounts it identified was turned over.
Congressional oversight committees told the AP they were unfamiliar with the few nonpublic government addresses that AP identified so far, including one for Secretary Kathleen Sebelius of the Health and Human Services Department.
The White House said the practice also was used by previous administrations, but its scale across the government remains a mystery: Most federal agencies have failed to turn over lists of political appointees’ e-mail addresses, which the AP sought under the Freedom of Information Act more than three months ago.
The Labor Department initially asked the AP to pay more than $1 million for its e-mail addresses.
The AP asked for such addresses after last year’s disclosures that former chiefs at the Environmental Protection Agency had used separate e-mail accounts at work. The practice is separate from officials who use personal, nongovernment e-mail accounts for work, which generally is discouraged due to laws requiring that most federal records be preserved.
