More government e-mails have gone missing.
Early this year, the Commerce Department told me there were an estimated 2,000 e-mails exchanged between the head of the Philadelphia region of the Census Bureau and his counterpart in the Chicago region from 2010 to early 2014.
In fact, Commerce even quoted me an exact price for copying services — $304.
Soon afterward, Commerce reassigned my request — which was made under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) — to another processor (one with a PhD!) and then told me that it wouldn't provide the bulk of the e-mails because of … one excuse or another.
To be fair, Commerce did turn over 10 insignificant e-mails between the two men — Fernando Armstrong in Philadelphia and Stanley Moore in Chicago. No charge, Commerce said, and it returned my $304.
The Post filed an appeal for the other 1,990 e-mails.
Just last week, Commerce answered that appeal and put a very strange twist on the story. Those 2,000 e-mails between the two men that seemed to exist early this year, really didn't.
Commerce said it did find another 13 new e-mails, but one of them was delivered to me with blotches of ink redacting large parts of it. Another e-mail given to me was sent from Armstrong to Moore on Feb. 24, 2014. It went like this: "Good morning, Stan. I have not forgotten our conversation yesterday. This morning I am trying to organize our staff and activities for the week … this is just a heads-up and I will call you later."
Moore, an octogenarian, headed the Chicago Census region for decades until he suddenly retired/left/was reassigned earlier this year after I requested these e-mails. I caught up to him once by phone but he didn't have much to say.
My sources inside Census have told me that Moore was Armstrong's mentor. And since the Philadelphia Census region had some — ahem — quality control issues like data fabrication, I thought it would be worthwhile to see what the two men were e-chatting about. So the Armstrong/Moore e-mails were among several requests I made under FOIA.
And I thought I'd get some answers until the Commerce Department came up with what I consider a bizarre explanation of what happened to the 2,000 e-mails.
No, the hard drive didn't crash.
And, no, Commerce didn't just tell me to go to hell — at least not in so many words. I'll give you all the pertinent words Commerce's assistant general counsel for administration, Barbara S. Fredericks, used in explaining the disappearing e-mails. (Even her letter explaining this wasn't straightforward, since someone else's signature appeared above Fredericks' typed name.)
"Because the Office of Information Security employee tasked with conducting the search was not personally familiar with the requested records, she was unable to estimate how many records the agency might have without conducting an actual search," said "Fredericks."
In fact, Commerce for months led me to believe it had — in fact — actually counted the e-mails between Armstrong and Moore.
"Fredericks" went on: "Therefore, Census' FOIA office used a prior FOIA request as a guide to estimate how many records a search might produce. That prior request yielded roughly 1,900 pages."
"Acting under the assumption that the request at issue in this appeal would probably yield a similar number of records, Census provided Mr. Crudele with a fee estimate based on 2,000 pages of responsive record," "Fredericks" explained.
But the actual search of the Armstrong/Moore records, she said, "produced a much lower page count." Fredericks said the mistake occurred because Census used a "model [that] was an unreliable indicator of how many records this new request might yield."
Please! Twenty-three e-mails instead of 2,000!
Census also wouldn't give me text messages between Armstrong and Moore because it has a "policy prohibiting government business from being conducted over text." So since text messaging is prohibited, Census told me, it doesn't bother to keep backups of text messages from government phones.
How convenient is that? If two government employees don't want their communications to be monitored, all they have to do is break the rules and use text messaging. Census wouldn't be able to tell whether you were planning a murder if you text.
Let's see if Census keeps copies of employees' phone logs. I recently filed a FOIA request for the phone logs of Armstrong and Moore, so I could see how many times these two talked.
House data report due
The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is scheduled to release a report next week on data falsification at the Census Bureau, Washington sources said.
The committee is expected to hold a hearing on the matter on Sept. 18. John Crudele
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