Bradley’s penchant for secrecy

I don’t know what John Bradley’s goals are as the Chair of the Texas Forensic Science Commission. But if one of them is to dispel the notion that he’s Rick Perry’s stooge, who was installed for the purpose of covering the Governor’s ass on the Cameron Todd Willingham case, then he’s doing it wrong.

John Bradley, who took over as chairman of the revamped commission Sept. 30, told state senators this month that the commission must adopt new rules before proceeding with the inquiry.

Bradley, district attorney for Williamson County, has also sought to control the release of information about commission activities. In an Oct. 30 e-mail obtained by the Star-Telegram, staff coordinator Leigh Tomlin asked commission members, “as a reminder of our e-mail retention policy, please delete all commission correspondence.

“If you feel there is something that needs to be saved, forward it to my office.”

Sen. Juan “Chuy” Hinojosa, D-McAllen, who sponsored legislation that created the commission in 2005, expressed disapproval with the policy, saying “it’s going in the wrong direction.”

“Surely deleting all e-mail correspondence is a nice way of saying, ‘destroy all correspondence,’ ” he said. “It’s the same thing.”

Hinojosa also said that because commission members are appointed independently of the chairman, they should be able to “keep and save whatever e-mail they want to keep.”

Bradley said the policy “simply seeks to make sure that all relevant information is saved at a single location.”

“As you might imagine,” Bradley wrote in an e-mail, “with digital information being sent, forwarded and replied to at the touch of button, an agency can find itself with duplicates of the information in numerous places.

“That makes it difficult for a public information officer to respond to requests for information and be confident about complying with all the legal requirements connected to that responsibility.”

That sound you hear is my bullshit detector blowing a gasket. Having official communications emanate from a single source does not require email purges. The reason you do that is to make it hard, if not impossible, for there to be a complete record of the Commission’s activities. There’s absolutely no justification for a commission whose purpose is to review forensic science procedures and make recommendations about best practices to be concerned about secrecy like this. Unless, of course, they expect to be discussing things that might embarrass someone they don’t want to be embarrassed. This policy needs to be stopped before any real damage is done.

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One Response to Bradley’s penchant for secrecy

  1. Baby Snooks says:

    Like I said, Chuck Rosenthal’s “mini-me.”

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