By The Prowler on 11.2.07 @ 12:08AM
What happened to Gov. Huckabee's gubernatorial documents?
Some former staffers of then-Gov. Mike Huckabee
and one current employee of the office that did some of the
destruction are saying that the media shouldn't assume that all
computer data and other documents were destroyed in the aftermath
of Huckabee's order to literally wipe the slate clean after he left
office.
Huckabee had ordered that the hard drives in 83 personal
computers and four servers be destroyed. That equipment and data
resided in the state Capitol, a state office in Washington, D.C.,
the Arkansas State Police airport hangar, the governor's mansion,
and the Arkansas State Police drug office. Additionally a number of
paper documents were shredded and burned.
Huckabee's office claimed the records were destroyed as a
courtesy to the incoming governor. Critics believe that the records
-- particularly those from the governor's mansion and the airport
hangar -- were destroyed to further conceal ethical breaches from
an administration that many considered more ethically challenged
than that of Bill Clinton.
According to the office of the Arkansas Department of
Information Systems (DIS), while the data off the 83 personal
computers is largely lost, the material on the servers was backed
up, and two sets of back-up tapes were given Huckabee's former
chief of staff, Brenda Turner. "One for the
governor, the other for whoever he wanted to give it to for
safekeeping," says a current employee of the Department of
Information Systems, who asked to not be identified out of fear for
their job. "We didn't keep anything, though."
One former Huckabee aide, however, says they were informed
several months ago that material the state office in Washington,
D.C. might also have been saved, including e-mails, memos from the
governor's office, and other state materials. "There is some
nervousness within the Huckabee presidential campaign that there is
material out there that is unaccounted for. They've been trying to
track down who was involved in destroying the Washington
material."
According to the DIS employee, hard drives from the Washington
computers might have been removed by an outside contractor and
shipped to DIS offices for destruction. The effort to cover up
Huckabee's trail didn't come cheap, either. Overall, the effort
cost Arkansas taxpayers almost $350,000. "It cost about $13,000 to
destroy the materials and another $330,000 to replace all of the
equipment after Huckabee left office," the employee says.
topics:
Bill Clinton
