When several reporters had FOIA-ed Marty Walsh’s email communications with Boston 2024, the Mayor’s Office told them that no such emails exist. Well, a couple months later, they finally found them. Maybe they were hiding under a couch?
The released documents contain two copies of the speech that Marty Walsh delivered before the USOC back in December when presenting Boston 2024’s bid.
Here is the most striking and disturbing part of the prepared remarks:
So believe me when I tell you, we don’t have real opposition [to the Olympics] in Boston. Everyone who is engaged; everyone who has listened; everyone who has faith in our future—understands the opportunity this represents for our city…Boston’s commitment to the Olympic Movement and the Olympic Games is broad and it is deep.
On behalf of No Boston 2024, one of the groups organizing against the bid, I gave the following statement to the Bay State Examiner, who first broke the story.
We find it confusing, even insulting, that Mayor Walsh spoke of the support for the city’s Olympic bid as “broad” and “deep” and wrote off the existence of any real opposition when he held no open community meetings in advance of the submission of the bid. The first open community meeting was a month and a half after the submission of the bid. What right does he have to speak of the views of the people of Boston when he did not have the decency to ask them what they thought? It is, furthermore, strange and—again—insulting, for him to speak of how “everyone who is engaged” or “who has listened” agrees with him when he neither engaged nor listened to the public for whom he claims to speak. In fact, the majority of the most engaged people are the ones most vehemently opposed to the bid. They are the ones that have done the most research, are armed with the most facts, and feel like the Olympics would be terrible for our city. It is similarly insulting for him to say that “anyone who has faith in our future” thinks that his and John Fish’s vanity project will benefit the city. We have faith in the future of Boston and believe that future must be designed by and for the people of Boston, not by private entities run by CEOs and lobbyists and for large developers and other moneyed interests.
Although Mayor Walsh claimed that support was “broad…and…deep,” the only public poll released before Walsh’s speech to the USOC said the exact opposition. That poll—part of a gubernatorial tracking poll by the Globe in June—showed a majority of Metro Boston opposed to hosting the Olympics. Moreover, it showed that the more people heard about the bid, the less supportive they became. When people were presented with the leading arguments from both sides, twice as many people said that they agreed with the opposition than with Boston 2024.
We have seen the same dynamic in recent polls. The polling for Boston 2024 dropped over the past month as people had the opportunity to learn more about the bid and hear the hole-ridden case put forth by Boston 2024. And people have consistently expressed an opposition to public funding for the Games and skepticism about the promised benefits.
Moreover, it is difficult to understand how he could say in December of last year that support was “broad…and deep” when neither he nor Boston 2024 had released the bid to the public. There were leaks to the press every now and again, but Boston 2024 did not release parts of the bid book until January–after the bid was accepted by the USOC. Even now, they refuse to release the full bid, only sharing a redacted version with the public. because they claim transparency as “anti-competitive.”
Erin Murphy, who appears to have edited or at least reviewed Mayor Walsh’s speech for him, was in fact at the first No Boston 2024 organizing meeting back in November on behalf of Boston 2024. There were several people from Boston 2024 (especially Northwind Strategies) who came, and there was at least one representative from the Mayor’s Office. We allowed them to attend because we, unlike they, valued openness in our meetings. Chris Dempsey from No Boston Olympics gave a short presentation at that meeting, and NBO had already been around for several months, providing excellent information and resources to Bostonians who wanted to learn more about the impact that hosting the Olympics would have on our city. Both Boston 2024 and the Mayor’s office were clearly aware of the existence of opposition. Writing off the opposition as Marty Walsh did is disrespectful and shows what has been clear throughout the public meetings that he finally started having (although always shows up late): that he is not interested in having a serious debate about whether or not the city should host, or wants to host, the Olympics. Everyone that lives here should be incredibly concerned about the deceptive, opaque, and flat-out dishonest statements coming from the Mayor of their city, who one would hope has the interests of his constituents in mind. It is clear that he does not care about what residents of the city think.
If our rookie mayor wants to build a true legacy for himself, he should scrap the bid and start focusing on the real issues that matter to Boston.
Marty Walsh’s office has since claimed that he never said the words in the released copy of the speech. If he didn’t, then he should release the text of his final prepared remarks. It is long since time for some transparency from the mayor about Boston 2024.
Walsh has promised “transparency” but has made little or no effort to actually deliver it. If the only way we have to find out what is going on is through FOIA requests then it is pretty clear how little he cares about genuine openness.
….and email?
Lerner, Clinton, now Walsh. They don’t strike me as Luddite…do they not understand that it’s not just the crime, it’s the cover-up?
I was amused today to see Lindsay Graham’s statement that anyone can see all his emails whenever they want because he’s never sent one. He may be on to something.
…and I really don’t think State Department business needs to be visible to everyone for basic security reasons.
One other problem account (and I do not recall the name?) was an administration enviornmental official who discussed business with lobbyists on a private account. Before you say so what, ask yourself if you want Pres. Cheney doing the same with gun manufacturers.
I agree State is special for security…but it has no exemption. And you need to extend this to Sec. Rice just as much as Sec. Clinton.
Clinton does know the rules and gambles that the press will protect her by disparaging those who question her conduct. Sad to see Walsh travelling that road.
I’ll save my outrage for Cheney’s actual policies on guns and would be interested in the industry’s contributions to his campaign, but communicating with them about the progress of a bill or something like that isn’t something I feel the need to read over his shoulder.
Why change the analogy? We’ve already lived through President Cheney meeting with energy CEOs, in person, in private, for months, then inviting all the environmental groups in only as the policy paper was already being written.
And refusing for a long time even to name the people involved or the dates of the meetings, even to the GAO.
And fighting for his right to keep the content of the meetings secret all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where his hunting buddy declined to recuse himself.
They have to be available to the government– specifically the Congress which is charged with legislative oversight. Once you get to the point saying, sorry or executive branch correspondence is purely private and you can’t have it, you are pretty much defending the Nixon administration.
…but even Congress should primarily focus on the results of these conversations. After all, if they had been conducted by phone there would not be a record, and certainly not if the same things were said in person.
then this would be an episode of Star Trek. What’s your point?
They were not phone conversations. They were written correspondence.
Written correspondence is a public record, and can’t be destroyed by a departing public official, based on that official’s whim. Would you be thrilled if the last 10 days of the Bush administration involved all outgoing employees feeding everything into a shredder, while Dick Cheney told us that he would decide what needed to be kept?
I like Hilary, but this is a pretty clear indication that a new Clinton administration will have its share of “definition of what ‘is’, is” type justifications of un-justifiable actions.
…that if exactly the same words had been used in phone or in-person exchanges there would not be a record, so why get all in a huff about preserving them just because they happened to have been written?
On the record is different from off the record. Written is different from spoken, and spoken in person is very different today from spoken by phone. No individual who fails to appreciate the implications of the distinction between an in-person conversation and a written communication is qualified to serve as president.
Surely you know the aphorism of Martin Lomasney — “never write when you can speak, and never speak when a nod will suffice”. There is a reason for that.
The modern world is filled with records — email, text (SMS), chat, IM, voicemail, and most telephone conversations. Like it or not, that’s reality. Virtually all voice telephony today is handled by the exchange of digital packets. Those packets are recorded at least by the servers that handle them, they survive at least until server logs are purged, and many or all are archived by the NSA. If nothing else, the spirit of the Second Amendment suggests to me that if the government (in the form of the NSA) has the ability to use such recordings, then the public must have the same ability (suitably managed for security and so on).
Whatever place there may be for executive privilege, that place excludes tape recordings of conversations in the Oval Office that capture government officials conspiring to commit felonies and impeachable acts — particularly when the president ordered the installation of the equipment, is aware of the recording, and intends to use it for his own purposes.
The intent of the laws about public records is clear. No public official, of either party, should rightfully evade those laws.
Period.
Like Hillary Clinton, former Secretary of State Colin Powell also used a personal email account during his tenure at the State Department, an aide confirmed in a statement.
But, but, but…Benghazi , amiright?
This is ‘Benghazi’ only insofar as it is an attempt to deceive the investigators.
Curious – has anybody looked at Kerry’s email accounts?
Many Republicans who have criticized Hillary Clinton for using her personal email for official business also found ways to delay or prevent public scrutiny of their communications while in office.
Thank you for making my point for me. She is not a governor or even a Senator any more.
The only records she had to keep are the ones she flouted.
And I hope Sec. Kerry is learning from this.
His email account was personal, but the server was not private, nor under his control. Huge difference.
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Corruption being the default state of politicians, I think emails relating to public business should absolutely be public documents. And as far as all this defense of Clinton goes, she reminds me a lot of Martha Coakley in terms of her apparent lack of crossover appeal combined with lackluster progressive credentials. So if we want to give Jeb Bush a really good shot at the presidency, let’s by all means nominate Hillary Clinton.
And BTW, I have no idea how the involvement of guys like Rull and Deval Patrick in this Olympics b.s. doesn’t violate the ethics law. I thought that the “forever ban” (section 4) prohibited working on stuff that you worked on while a public official?
With all due respect to Christopher, the reference to Mr. Kineavy is completely apt, as was the contemptuously partisan response from then Attorney General Martha Coakley. She dismissed the allegations as a campaign stunt.
As with most things Coakley, your raw hatred of her seemingly overcomes your usual commitment to reality-based truth again here.
The truth is that the AG’s office completed a thorough investigation of the Kineavy email issue, reviewing “thousands of pages of documents from the City of Boston”, completing “a forensic analysis of Kineavy’s computer systems” and conducting “interviews of more than a dozen witnesses.” The conclusion was that the facts did not support criminal charges.
Like almost all Boston City Hall employees from 2000-2010, Kineavy deleted his emails on a daily basis with the misunderstanding that back-ups were kept on the City Hall server. I know for a fact that this was the common practice of City Hall employees during that period of time. That, as the AG’s investigation found, “the City’s own policies indicated that all emails were being saved on a back-up server and specifically encouraged employees to delete emails on a daily basis.”
See:http://www.mass.gov/ago/news-and-updates/press-releases/2010/ago-completes-city-of-boston-email-investigation.html
So, there’s that reality.
Meanwhile,is there any truth at all to your allegation that Coakley dismissed the Kineavy email issue as a “campaign stunt”? I can’t find any reference to that at all. (see e.g.: https://www.google.com/search?num=20&newwindow=1&q=coakley+kineavy+%22campaign+stunt%22&oq=coakley+kineavy+%22campaign+stunt%22&gs_l=serp.3…308426.315920.0.316127.36.31.1.1.1.0.255.3456.0j17j4.21.0.msedr…0…1c.1.62.serp..25.11.1609.8IBnHSUOnO0 )
and deleted emails only when told my box was almost completely full. If I remember correctly we had to sign something indicating that we understood our obligation to preserve documents, including emails. Daily double deletion was by no means the office policy, or even a general practice, at least in the Assessing Department.
I worked at City Hall from 2001-2007. I deleted email very regularly but was also told that a back-up was made at least once a day of our entire system and saved on the main server. My understanding, and those of many of my co-workers, was that this was the general practice of all City workers and compliant with the public records retention policies. At least in my Department.
I’ve never understood why anyone would do this. Wouldn’t a person want to be able to access important info contained in emails, or refer to them later in the event of a problem or dispute, while dealing with day-to-day work situations? Few indeed are the issues that can be resolved in a day, fewer still communications that are somehow relevant only for a few hours, no matter what your job title or department. Even in non-government white-collar jobs, surely most emails have enough significance to be preserved for at least a few days.
I did delete some email every day. Whenever I “dealt with” (responded to or otherwise) an email, I would delete it. Sometimes, yes, that would take at least a few days. Other times, I would print an email (I kept a paper file) if I thought it was likely to be needed in the event of a problem or dispute at a later date. Often, I deleted an email the same day it was received. And, like Kineavy, I made it a habit to “double delete” emails from my Trash every work day to make room for more emails. The number of emails that could simply remain in either one’s Inbox or Trash folder was much more limited. It would fill up quickly, especially if one was emailing documents or other attachements.
Double-deletion is DESIGNED to thwart the law.
The “thousands of pages of documents” reviewed were assembled by an after-the-fact “investigation” that was very unlikely to have returned the emails that would have been of interest, because it looked only at emails received by other government/city hall employees. Further, that “investigation” released its data in a form that was difficult or impossible to search using conventional tools (they were returned as PAGE IMAGES!). See my earlier (2009) comments here and here.
Sadly, the Boston Globe has moved the archived story that I referenced here (again in 2009) behind its paywall.
In short, the “investigation” was a self-serving facade intended (like most police department internal investigations) to ensure the clean result that it produced.
This episode was a cause, rather than a result, of my contempt for the performance of Ms. Coakley as AG (I don’t know her at all, I can’t possibly “hate” her).
The dismissal was in an on-air interview published while the issue was hot. I’m reasonably certain I cited a link to it at least once in the old BMG corpus — I have no access to that now.
I did, however, finally find one pointer to it — this reference from September of 2009 (emphasis mine):
That’s what she said. When it happened, the video was online. The link to the source in the above quote is now broken. Nevertheless, that is exactly what she said. Let’s remember that this happened in the midst of the prosecution of Diane Wilkerson, and it had (and has) all the appearances of an obstruction of justice.
Ms. Coakley dismissed it as a campaign stunt.
There’s absolutely no evidence that Kineavy double deleted email with the intent of thwarting the public record retention law or policies. Quite the opposite, this practice was *encouraged* by the IT department in City Hall in the years preceding the scandal (the 2000s).
Way back them, computer storage space was very limited. Without regular maintenance, including deleting one’s Trash folder, individual cityofboston.gov email accounts would fill up quickly. Then, you could no longer receive or send emails. It was a very common practice to double delete to avoid that problem. Indeed, That’s what we all were instructed to do by the IT department and, we were told explicitly, that the IT department backed up the server every day so that compliance with public records retention was not an issue.
Neither you nor I have insight into Mr. Kineavy’s intent. My observation was, and is, that double-deletion is designed to thwart the law. I have no doubt that the practice was encouraged by the IT department of City Hall — that is very germane to the point!
Even by 2005, email simply does not consume enough disk space to constitute a serious disk consumption burden. I’m quite sure that if disk space were a problem, there were other files (server logs, transaction logs, startup and shutdown logs, etc) that consume orders of magnitude more space.
If the IT department actually backed up the server every day, then the emails would have been available to provide.
Sorry, but this story simply doesn’t add up.
On the matter of Mr. Kineavy’s intent, the AG investigation conclusion was definitive. They said:
For you to simply state “double-deletion is designed to thwart the law” is indefensible and, frankly, a needlessly paranoid conclusion. The facts (as determined by the investigation that included interviews with Kineavy himself) do not support your assertion. And neither do my personal experiences at Boston City Hall as an employee during much of the time period in question.
How did I change my tune?
We differ in our view of the credibility of the “AG Investigation”. The AG conducting the investigation was in a campaign at the time (for the Senate). It would have been very embarrassing for that investigation to conclude anything different than it did, particularly since the AG was so clearly reluctant to initiate the “investigation”.
Do you also accept the FBI “investigations” of alleged FBI misconduct (the ones that uniformly concluded that no misconduct occurred)?
Sing the same tune if you want. My view is that the facts strongly suggest that your song is at best off-key.
By the way, any comment on the link I posted above documenting Ms. Coakley’s initial dismissal of the episode as a campaign stunt?
Here are her words:
Have I mis-characterised her contemporaneous but on-the-record comments?
She didn’t quite say it was a “stunt.” And I wonder what she might have said before or after that sentence (I can’t seem to find the quote in question in any context). But, that said, no, you didn’t significantly mis-charecterize her comment.
But all AG investigations of government officials are political. I have more inherent trust than you in those processes, obviously. The results of this one, started in the midst of but not finished until more than six months *after * the Mayoral and Senate election, speak for themselves. And, in exonerating Kineavy, the investigation’s findings mesh with my personal experience with the Boston City Hall email system at that same time period.
I am an attorney and knew that my cityofboston.gov emails were legally required to be retained as public documents. But, I swear, the IT department (MIS) repeatedly told us that they backed up the email server every night. We were specifically instructed that this was enough for compliance with the law. Plus, space definitely was an issue and our email boxes were often “getting full” so that we’d get escalating warnings directing us to fee up space. L Double deleting became routine in that environment.
I know that I double deleted thousands of emails from my cityofboston.gov account, without even considering the possibility that I was destroying them forever (which, again, I knew very well was illegal). MIS told us otherwise! I believe Kineavy when he say that he did the same.
I forgot to say that I still do think your initial comment about Coakley “dismissing the allegations” was misleading since it was made without noting that she did nevertheless start an investigation. It confused me, at least, in to thinking you were saying that the AG chose to completely ignore the charges altogether. Which is why I responded with the fact that there was what I consider to be a fairly thorough AG investigation.
The Kineavy affair is filled with so many coincidences.
The issue came up because the Globe, in reporting the Diane Wilkerson prosecution, became aware of attempts by investigators to explore her connections to city hall. My recollection is that both she and Chuck Turner cited Mr. Kineavy as the individual they did (illegal) business with. The alleged racket was that city liquor licenses could only be obtained through Mr. Kineavy (or something to that effect). The narrative of the Globe stories was that Ms. Wilkerson would lead them to Mr. Kineavy. The clear implication of this was that the racket was centered in City Hall.
Hence, the Globe (and others) began FOIA requests. They found, apparently like the federal investigators, that Mr. Kineavy’s email records were not available. Even though Mr. Kineavy was THE individual who “handled” these matters for City Hall, none of his email was preserved.
I’m sure it was just a coincidence that the trail from Ms. Wilkerson and Mr. Turner led to a dead end. I’m sure it was just a coincidence that both Ms. Wilkerson and Mr. Turner are black, and the rest of the players white. I’m sure that it was just a coincidence that there were NO records kept for the individual in city hall who handled all such matters. I’m sure it was just a coincidence that Ms. Coakley was running a campaign, and needed the political support of the Democratic machine that might have gotten sand in its gears had a pay-for-play scandal gotten traction. I’m sure it was just coincidence that Ms. Coakley finally did launch a
whitewashinvestigation after enough evidence had been cooked to satisfy critics.So many coincidences. So little passion for clean government.
ALL electronic records should be treated as public records. ALL of them.
Republicans are just as evasive about this as Democrats.
I’m pretty sure you were the favorite candidate on BMG during your race in 2013. Why don’t you stop by and thank your supporters, and while you’re at it you just might notice some opposition to the Olympics?:)
He is only going to care about people who either give him money or who actually vote in Boston.
I would not be surprised to find that the union guys who supported him in the election are also for the Olympics since whoever ends up paying the bill, the Olympics will probably bring some more construction jobs.
Thought Marty was smarter than this. Just because no major public figure was come out against Boston2024 has come out in opposition doesn’t mean that “nobody” opposes it. Talk about an own goal.
Strike one, for me, was Mr. Walsh’s on-air statement that did not believe convicted felon John O’Brien was guilty of a crime.
This is strike two.
Mr. Walsh is looking more and more like just another sleaze.
is that Deval Patrick and JOHN Walsh are jumping on this bandwagon. What gives?
Isn’t he to be paid for his efforts? Perhaps Walsh will be as well.
“influence peddling?” Democrats are as bad at trying to grab goodies as Republicans are. I will be interested if we see the results of a FOIA about letters and email to various state agencies indicating Deval gave approval to any meetings or decisions by the state to support the Olympic bid. If that proves true, as seems highly likely with B2024 top dog Rich Davey then he and his minions are guilty of violating the “forever ban” on public employees working on issues over which they had any influence during their public employment.
Alas, the Boston Glob and the Boston Whoreworld lack reporters with the gumption to pursue this.
Did I mention that the Ethics Commission is investigating this already?
Patrick mum on IOC lobbying $, but lots more than $151,800. http://bit.ly/1aVdRBy “I miss private sector on payday” @no_boston2024
n/t
of one percenters and hang out with one-percenters without wanting to be one of one-percenters.
Between Fish’s comments, Walsh’s comments, and the written application of Boston 2024, the list of false statements is alarming. Ends justify the means much?