GOP accuses EPA chief of using secret email

Republican leaders of the House Science Committee want to know if EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson is using private email addresses or psuedonyms to conduct official business in an effort to dodge public scrutiny. Lawmakers are citing a recent  Daily Caller story alleging that Jackson has used “alias email accounts,” including one under the name “Richard Windsor.” “This reported incident follows similarly secretive and highly questionable methods of communication by senior officials at science agencies within the White House, Department of Commerce (DOC), and Department of Energy (DOE),” the Republicans said in a news release. Committee Chairman Ralph Hall and five other Republicans on the panel sent letters Friday to the EPA, the White House and other agencies. Earlier this year, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee raised red flags after learning that an Energy Department employee had used a Gmail account to send confidential information to a company that went on to get a $1.4 billion partial loan guarantee. In September, the Competitive Enterprise Institute sued EPA to demand the release of emails from “‘secondary,' nonpublic email accounts for EPA administrators.” It cited a 2008 memo in which an agency official told the National Archives and Records Administration that the accounts had begun under Clinton-era EPA chief Carol Browner...more