May, 2003:

Governor Perry has declared his intent to call a special legislative session, but not for any of the issues (budget, school finance, redistricting) that have been anticipated so far. He’s vowed to keep legislators in Austin until they pass a tort reform bill that’s to his liking.

House and Senate leaders have been in a standoff over the proposal, House Bill 4, for days. The Senate favors a more flexible cap that would allow up to $750,000 in damages for pain, suffering, disfigurement and loss of companionship, but Perry and Speaker Tom Craddick back the $250,000 cap in the House version.

Craddick said Perry has been saying for weeks that he would immediately call a special session if the $250,000 cap was not written into law.

Rep. Joe Nixon, the bill’s author, said Wednesday that Perry told him on the House floor Monday that he would call a special session on the issue after the regular session ends Monday if the bill isn’t passed.

“He told me to tell everybody, `Don’t pack your bags,’ ” said Nixon, R-Houston.

“That is an appropriate recollection of the conversation,” Perry said hours later, according to the Associated Press. “I don’t know why we would want to go home.

“We’re trying to limit litigation here,” Perry said. “I think the House numbers are appropriate.”

The House last week refused to concur in the Senate amendments to the bill and named five members to serve on a committee to work out a compromise. But Sen. Bill Ratliff, R-Mount Pleasant, so far has refused to ask Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst to appoint senators to that conference committee.

This bill has a strange history, having attracted opposition from anti-abortion activists who think it will make it easier for doctors to perform abortions (given all of the abortion-restricting laws this Lege has passed so far, I wouldn’t worry about that too much if I were they).

Ratliff said a zero cap on noneconomic damages would reduce insurance costs even more, “but that doesn’t mean it’s right.”

Ratliff acknowledged he’s getting pressured about the bill. But as one of the Senate’s most respected members, Ratliff likely can count on his colleagues to back him up.

“The Senate trusted me to hear the testimony and propose a reasonable solution,” said Ratliff, who listened to 60 hours of testimony from doctors as well as patients who had been severely injured. “I won’t violate the very trust the Senate put in me. I’m not going to do that. I’m not going to walk away just because of the heat.”

Senator Ratliff, who was the acting Lt. Governor when Perry took over for Bush in 2001, seems likely to compromise to me. He’s a pragmatic sort, but he also supposedly has no big love for Perry, so if he feels he’s getting bullied he may very well dig in his heels. We’ll see.

Meanwhile, as Clay Robison notes, whatever law gets passed will ultimately be a constitutional amendment that the voters can approve or reject this fall. Unlike most such amendments, this one will be voted on in a special election on September 13, instead of in November. Proponents of the bill are afraid that Houston voters, who will be electing a mayor, will have too much effect on its outcome. It’s a slick yet sleazy maneuver, sure to reduce turnout.

I believe the bill deserves to die a swift death, but that ain’t gonna happen. Tort reform is an illusion, a false solution to a manufactured crisis that aims to screw the little guy. And as Dwight Meredith asked, if politicians like Rick Perry have so little faith in civil juries, why do they trust criminal juries so much?

State Rep. Kevin Bailey (D-Houston) has announced that his committee has finished its investigation of record-shredding by DPS and the security tapes.

“It may have been a technical violation of the law to destroy the documents. I don’t think there was an intent to cover up anything. So I don’t think there’s a need to look at it any further,” said Rep. Kevin Bailey, D-Houston, chairman of the House General Investigation Committee.

[…]

The committee chairman said his office talked to a DPS officer who called the federal Department of Homeland Security to help track a missing lawmaker’s plane. That investigator told the committee staff that he did not recall who initiated the phone call but denied the federal agency’s statements that he misled officials to make them believe the plane may have crashed.

Mr. Bailey said the committee can go no further concerning whether federal homeland security assets were abused.

And, he said, there is nothing more to pursue on the subject of Deputy Texas Attorney General Jay Kimbrough, the top state homeland security official, who was seen on a surveillance tape at a DPS command post for the manhunt.

Mr. Bailey said he has no choice but to accept statements from the Texas attorney general’s office that Mr. Kimbrough was present in his capacity as a state lawyer, advising DPS and House Speaker Tom Craddick, R-Midland, on legal issues related to the hunt.

“And if that’s the case, I don’t see a problem. On the other hand, obviously, if they used the federal agency that’s designed to get terrorists, that might be a problem,” Mr. Bailey said. “I’m not sure it’s anything that I can really, or we can really, get information on.”

With his involvement over, the rest of the work will be done by Travis County DA Ronnie Earle, who has convened a grand jury to determine if any laws were broken by DPS and its magical miracle shredding machine. There are also internal investigations being conducted by Homeland Security and the Department of Transportation regarding the propriety of DPS’s request to help them look for Laney’s plane.

Speaking of Homeland Security, they say that their investigation is almost over, but it’s not clear when their full findings will be made public.

James Burke, a deputy assistant inspector general at the Homeland Security Department, said Wednesday that the investigation will be concluded in the next few days.

But he said tapes shielded from public release because of the investigation will not be immediately available.

Those tapes are expected to illuminate facts surrounding the Texas Department of Public Safety’s request for help from the anti-terrorism agency’s air interdiction service to locate an airplane of former House Speaker Pete Laney of Hale Center, one of the runaway Democrats.

“Our investigation is wrapping up soon,” Burke said. “We’re talking days, versus weeks. But there’s the report process, and that could take a while.”

Once the report on the investigation is complete, Burke said, it will be available to the public only through Freedom of Information Act requests.

It was unclear at what point the tapes of conversations between DPS and the Air & Marine Interdiction Coordination Center, an agency of the Homeland Security Department, will be made public.

Back in Texas, keep your eyes on State Rep. Lon Burnam (D-Fort Worth), who has filed a lawsuit to prevent DPS from destroying any more records related to their search for the Killer D’s. Burnam had filed an open records request for the DPS data before it was revealed to have been deleted, then got a temporary restraining order against DPS to halt any further records destruction. He has claimed to have a source inside DPS who has intimate knowledge of what DPS knew and when they knew it. Attorney General Greg Abbott has demanded to know who that source is, and now Burnam has pledged to reveal his source in a sworn deposition on Monday after a judge ruled that he must testify.

The ruling set up a showdown of sorts between Burnam and the Texas attorney general’s office, which Burnam suggested was trying to hide links between top Republicans and the DPS actions by fighting to squelch his lawsuit against the DPS.

At a hearing set for Monday, the Fort Worth Democrat will be asked to reveal the identity of a “well placed source inside DPS” on which Burnam based much of his lawsuit.

He said the source can corroborate his charge that DPS officials destroyed records illegally.

The records were sought by Burnam in an attempt to prove improper use of law enforcement assets in the hunt for AWOL Democrats who fled to Oklahoma two weeks ago, preventing a quorum and derailing a congressional redistricting bill favored by Republicans.

In court Wednesday, the deputy attorney general defending the DPS said he had doubts about Burnam’s source.

“If he knows of egregious acts going on now, why is he stalling? Why is he reluctant to come tell us about it?” Jeff Boyd asked visiting state District Judge Charles Campbell.

Outside the courtroom, Boyd, the state’s deputy attorney general for litigation, said he doubted Burnam’s source exists.

“He is calling me a liar, and I highly resent that,” Burnam said.

“The source does indeed exist, and it’s (a person) who is well placed inside DPS, and I will reveal that source” under oath on Monday, he said.

He charged that Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott’s office “is apparently trying to find out who a whistle-blower is rather than stopping the illegal shredding of documents.”

“I wonder what they have to cover up, especially with those AG people coming in and out of the command post,” Burnam said.

That should be fun.

The Austin American Statesman has a sharp editorial which deplores the use of Homeland Security for inappropriate purposes:

Homeland Security became linked to a partisan political squabble in Texas because the state Department of Public Safety called the federal agency and intimated that Laney’s plane might be missing. Who authorized the bogus call and who made it have been obscured by foggy memories and shredded records.

What isn’t in doubt is that the state police department called in a false alarm to the Homeland Security Department about Laney’s plane, bringing the federal authorities into a local political dispute. Nor is it in doubt that a DPS commander ordered the records of the call and investigation destroyed, and that an assistant state attorney general who is Gov. Rick Perry’s contact for Homeland Security was in and out of the command center set up to search for the missing Democrats by House Speaker Tom Craddick.

The attorney general’s office says that the assistant in question, Jay Kimbrough, was there on official business and doesn’t know whether he gave the Homeland Security number to DPS to make the call. It all smells like a backroom brainstorm that exploded and is being covered up.

Finally, Josh Marshall clues in Joe Biden about what’s been going on lately.

[We] now know that DeLay was personally involved in the effort to track down Laney’s plane. The chain of events went something like this:

Early on May 12, DeLay’s office called the FAA and received information about the whereabouts of Laney’s plane. Not long after that, DeLay spoke to Craddick by phone and passed along that information. Then, a short time later, Lt. Will Crais, a Texas state trooper working out of the command center in the conference room adjoining Craddick’s office, called the DHS and tricked them into helping search for the missing aircraft. The information Crais used was the information DeLay had passed on to Craddick.

It ain’t over yet.

UPDATE: From Josh Marshall:

On Thursday afternoon, I spoke to Burnam. He told me that he has “multiple sources” at the DPS who told him about the alleged document destruction. He also says he will identify his sources at the deposition on Monday, though he is currently trying to arrange some sort of whistleblower protection for them. When I asked Burnam why he thought the AG’s office placed such importance on finding out the identity of his sources, he said he thought “they are trying to find out what I know and who I know it from and how they can get to them.”

Can’t wait to hear it.

Now that all of the security tapes have arrived intact from DPS, a new star is born: Assistant Attorney General Jay Kimbrough, the governor’s “point man” for the Department of Homeland Security, who was there in the command post on the day that Homeland Security was contacted with the cock-and-bull story about Pete Laney’s plane.

[House General Investigating Committee Chairman Kevin Bailey, D-Houston] said Kimbrough, one of Perry’s former deputy chiefs of staff, was in the DPS command center that was set up May 12 in the speaker’s reception room.

“We don’t know how much of a role he played, but it does appear he was very heavily involved in the process,” Bailey said.

Angela Hale, spokeswoman for Attorney General Greg Abbott, said Kimbrough was in the room in his capacity as an assistant attorney general, not as homeland defense coordinator.

Hale said Kimbrough had gone to the command center with Abbott’s first assistant, Barry McBee, to offer legal assistance to Craddick and the DPS. McBee is Perry’s former chief of staff.

Hale said McBee called U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton in San Antonio to see if the FBI could be used to bring the lawmakers back from Oklahoma or whether the DPS could arrest them across the state line. She said Sutton’s office said “no” to both questions.

As Josh Marshall notes, the clearest thing to come out of all this so far is the probable identity of the fall guy.

Another person who made an appearance in the command center that day is none other than the Governor himself, though only the Chronicle made any real mention of it.

Perry spokeswoman Kathy Walt refused to discuss what Perry did while in the command center but denied he had any role in the use of federal Homeland Security resources.

“I’ve never had any inkling that anybody on our staff, including the governor, called Homeland Security,” Walt said.

Whatever. If Perry had taken any questionable actions here, I fully expect that he’d have done it through vague phrases and several layers of underlings, so that like a mafia don he’d be hard to nail down.

The tapes did show that Tom DeLay’s aide Jim Ellis did nothing noticeable, meaning that the missing six hours was just the result of honest incompetence and not anything sinister. We can all breathe easier now.

Rep. Bailey’s investigation appears to be winding down, but that doesn’t mean it’s all over, as the Austin American Statesman reports:

Bailey said his committee probably will play no major role in any further investigations.

The committee’s preliminary inquiry has satisfied him that DPS probably did nothing criminal when it rushed to destroy all of its records of the search, Bailey said, even though “they probably shouldn’t have done it.”

Because Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle is already investigating the records destruction, Bailey said, the committee plans no further inquiry into that.

Marshall Caskey, chief of criminal law enforcement for DPS, has already testified before a county grand jury, and more witnesses are expected to testify Thursday.

Bailey said his committee will probably leave it to federal authorities to sort out whether the Homeland Security Agency did anything improper during the search because his committee does not have the power to demand federal records.

So we’ve got Kimbrough’s as-yet-undetermined role, we’ve got Ronnie Earle deposing DPS, and we’ve got Joe Lieberman pestering the White House. I’m beginning to get the feeling that unless there’s another revelation coming, this thing is about to peter out. We can mutter all we want about the DPS’ lightning reflexes when it comes to records disposal, but without those records it’ll be nigh impossible to tie the smoke to any fires. I hope I’m wrong, but I’m a bit pessimistic right now.

I agree with Big Media Matt that Joe Lieberman can only help himself in the Presidential primaries by pushing for an investigation of Tom DeLay. It’s an issue that will resonate with partisan Democrats without forcing him to tack left or right, and so far he’s the only one out there doing it. It won’t change the minds of those who really dislike Lieberman for one reason or another, but he certainly won’t lose any ground with this. And who knows? He might eventually get the David Broders and Tim Russerts, also known as “DC’s wizards of high dudgeon”, as Josh Marshall called them, to start talking about this. That would be fun.

You know things are going badly at the Department of Public Safety when they can’t even dupe a tape without screwing it up:

“I don’t know if people are trying to run out the clock so we’re not in town any more or if it’s just incompetence. Either one is bothersome,” said Rep. Kevin Bailey, D-Houston, chairman of the House General Investigating Committee.

Bailey’s committee is looking into how the Texas Department of Public Safety coordinated its search for 55 missing legislators on May 12, whether anyone associated with U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay helped direct the search and why DPS officials ordered some records on the issue destroyed on May 14.

As part of the probe, Bailey had asked DPS to turn over Capitol security tapes for the hallway outside of House Speaker Tom Craddick’s office. A DPS command post was set up May 12 in Craddick’s reception room, and Bailey said he wants to know who went in and out of that room.

Bailey said the DPS provided his staff with copies of the security tapes late Friday. As the staff watched them over the weekend, the entire week was available except for the afternoon of May 12. He said the tape stopped at 12:47 p.m. and did not begin again until 6 p.m.

“It’s odd that it was the day and time that we wanted,” Bailey said. “It’s fine all week, except for that one period.”

DPS officials scrambled to make a new copy of the May 12 afternoon tape, which was given to the lawmaker Monday evening.

“It’s a simple malfunction,” said DPS spokesman Tom Vinger. “They’re copying hours and hours of tape. They just didn’t notice some was missing.”

Y’know, maybe setting up DPS to oversee state crime labs isn’t such a good idea after all.

UPDATE: DPS managed to copy the missing tape without overwriting it with the last Buffy episode or some such. As Josh Marshall notes, the missing segment has quite a bit of potential for muckraking:

[House Investigations Committee Chairman Kevin Bailey, D-Houston] also indicated that a Travis County grand jury investigating the destruction of records has apparently extended to some House members; [Jim] Ellis, an aide to U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay; and perhaps DeLay himself.

Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle was unavailable for comment.

Last week, Earle quietly convened a grand jury and took testimony from DPS law enforcement chief Marshall Caskey. His focus was on the agency’s role in destroying files that DPS criminal investigators compiled during the two days that state troopers and Texas Rangers were searching for the runaway legislators.

Bailey’s committee and Earle apparently have zeroed in on a six-hour period May 12 as the likeliest time DPS officials called federal Homeland Security officers to seek their help in tracking down the Democrats.

It was that time period that was missing on the tape.

What a shame that grand jury proceedings are confidential.

I’ve been out of town for most of this weekend, so I’ll just point you to Josh Marshall, who’s been on the Tom DeLay story like Rush Limbaugh on an all-you-can-eat buffet. Marshall notes that now the Department of Transoprtation is now investigating what DeLay knew and when he knew it during the Killer D’s standoff. The crux of the issue is that DeLay apparently used his office to get FAA data that’s not available to the public and gave it to Tom Craddick and the DPS.

Will this lead to anything that actually sticks to DeLay? Who knows? I think Marshall is exactly right when he says that DeLay benefits from his reputation as being a power-hungry jerk, because journalists don’t really consider that to be news. Obviously, the soft bigotry of low expectations is not a universally negative thing.

Someone who could really use some low expectations right about now is Speaker Craddick:

Craddick spokesman Bob Richter said Friday that Craddick and DeLay spoke about the matter May 12, but that Craddick does not remember who initiated the call.

“He doesn’t remember any details at all about that day,” Richter said. Acting on a vote of House members present May 12, Craddick ordered the missing representatives arrested and returned to the Capitol, as allowed under House rules.

Apparently, the ghost of Elizabeth Ray works in Craddick’s office. What a joke.

In the Sky Is Blue And Water Is Wet Department, Tom DeLay has admitted that yes, he did have a role in the DPS investigation of the Killer D’s.

DeLay said his staff used public information at the Federal Aviation Administration to track former Texas Speaker Pete Laney’s airplane.

Laney was among 55 Democrats who broke a House quorum on May 12 to kill a congressional redistricting bill sought by DeLay, R-Sugar Land. Craddick and DeLay wanted the errant legislators arrested and returned to the House to force a vote on the bill.

“I was told at the time that that plane was in the air coming from Ardmore, Oklahoma, back to Georgetown, Texas,” DeLay said of the FAA’s information, which he said was also available on the agency’s Web site. “I relayed that information to Tom Craddick.”

Texas Department of Public Safety officers working in Craddick’s office had the same information when it contacted a federal air interdiction agency to seek its help in finding Laney’s airplane. The federal agency has since said it was misled into believing Laney’s airplane was missing and possibly had crashed.

Homeland Defense Secretary Tom Ridge, meanwhile, said Thursday his agency is investigating “potentially criminal” misuse of the federal air interdiction service by the DPS.

DeLay said he played no part in the DPS’ decision to contact the federal air interdiction service. And Craddick denies knowing anything about how the DPS came to call the agency.

“I don’t know who contacted who,” Craddick said.

I’ll pause a moment so you can catch your breath and/or stop guffawing. In the meantime, if you’re in the vicinity of Austin or Tom DeLay’s office in Washington, watch out for pointed fingers. Someone could lose an eye.

Meanwhile, in Austin, the Travis County DA’s investigation of search records destroyed by DPS is underway as the chief of DPS was questioned by the grand jury.

The sworn testimony of Marshall Caskey came two days after his agency acknowledged he ordered the destruction of all investigative files the state police accumulated while tracking the lawmakers.

It wasn’t immediately clear who besides Caskey testified Thursday. But the investigation by Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle clearly ratchets up the scrutiny on the role the DPS and the federal Homeland Security Department played in the search for the legislators.

Both Earle and the DPS declined to comment on the grand jury proceeding. Late in the day, Earle issued a statement saying his office is “examining the circumstances surrounding the destruction of (DPS) records. The questions (being asked) include what records were destroyed, under what authority and why the records were destroyed so quickly.”

The statement also noted the DPS is cooperating with the probe.

Also Thursday, Rep. Lon Burnam, D-Fort Worth, sought and secured a temporary restraining order in state district court in Austin to prevent the DPS from destroying any more of its records.

Burnam, one of the Democrats who fled to Oklahoma, earlier this week filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking all the materials the DPS accumulated during the two days it said it searched for the lawmakers.

While this has the potential to be juicy, they do take time and often disappear off the radar screen. I haven’t heard much about any of the other investigations since they first made news.

The Austin American Statesman‘s John Kelso notes an irony in all this:

Where DPS started looking real screwy is when it destroyed all the records they had compiled about the search for the Democrats — with one exception. The Cops of the Keystone Kind forgot to ditch the incriminating e-mail.

Yes, I know, it’s not as easy as just hitting the Delete key. But still, that’s pretty funny.

The Star Telegram has possibly the ugliest photos of Tom Ridge and Tom DeLay you’ll ever see, plus a reminder from DeLay that like Lord Voldemort and Darth Vader, he may have retreated but he hasn’t been defeated:

“I’m not giving up,” DeLay said. “And I will not be intimidated. This is not over yet.”

There was no indication if he rubbed his hands maniacally amidst evil laughter and lightning strikes in the background.

Finally, from the Dallas Morning News, some more good news for the Democrats:

In related matter, a DPS spokeswoman said a Travis County prosecutor has told the DPS that there was insufficient evidence to press charges in the reported theft of a GOP redistricting map. A Craddick aide said that an aide to U.S. Rep. Martin Frost, D-Arlington, took draft redistricting maps from his briefcase, which he had left unattended in a Capitol committee room.

A surveillance camera showed that Frost aide leaving the room with documents.

Given how crappy surveillance camera video often is, that’s no surprise. Call the CSI folks next time, fellas. They’re always able to pull the right pixels out of the image.

In the comments to this post, Morat suggests the statute that DPS was talking about, and goes to show why it’s not applicable. Josh Marshall is on the same page, and he’s quoted from this Star Telegram article and this Statesman article to show the contradiction that DPS is in.

“The mere invocation of it is nothing more than an attempt to find an excuse, to find some sort of cover for what is clearly an embarrassing action that was probably taken hastily,” said Houston attorney Rob Wiley, a former president of the Texas Freedom of Information Foundation. “It seems on its face to be ludicrous.”

Wiley and Austin media law attorney Bill Aleshire said the records destruction might have violated state open records laws, or worse.

“We’ve got DPS using the criminal investigation apparatus of the U.S. to track the Killer Ds, and then they destroy the evidence of the tracking on the grounds that it wasn’t a criminal matter,” Aleshire said. “DPS knew the first day they were looking for the Killer Ds that it was not a criminal investigation. If they violated federal regulations, if not other laws, in using the criminal investigation apparatus for this political purpose, the destruction of the records that were created could be considered obstruction of justice.”

Aleshire noted that the federal code the department cited to destroy the records also seems to prohibit it from using its criminal intelligence program to collect information on the missing lawmakers.

The code is a lengthy federal provision setting guidelines for handling records in far-ranging criminal investigations such as loan sharking and drug trafficking.

Among other things, the code requires that law enforcement agencies “shall make assurances that there will be no harassment or interference with any lawful political activities as part of the intelligence operation.”

The Chron has a new front page story which indicates that Tom Ridge is acknowledging what the Democrats have said all along:

Ridge made the statement near the end of a hearing before the House Select Committee on Homeland Security, as Democrats repeated their request that he release tapes of conversations between the Texas Department of Public Safety, which was searching for the missing Democrats, and an agency of Ridge’s department.

“This is now potentially a criminal investigation,” Ridge responded to a question from Rep. Bill Pascrell, D-N.J. “The tapes are part of the evidentiary chain. When you’re involved in a criminal investigation involving information and pieces of evidence, they’re not necessarily available for public review right now. At some point in time I suspect it will be available.”

It’s not the act but the coverup. It’s not just impropriety but the appearance of impropriety. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

It’s really amusing that Texas State GOP Chair Sarah Weddington told her colleagues to use phrases like “on the lam” when describing the Killer D’s walkout because it connotes “criminal wrongdoing”, especially given that the justification being bandied about by the Texas Department of Public Safety for destroying all records having to do with the search for the Killer D’s is that it was not a criminal matter.

DPS spokeswoman Tela Mange said the agency acted appropriately in destroying the records because federal law mandates that law enforcement agencies cannot keep intelligence information on individuals who are not suspected of a crime. The missing lawmakers were not accused of any crimes.

Which leads to a question that Josh Marshall asked:

Does this regulation even exist? In each of the stories I’ve read this evening, the writer passes on that claim without any comment giving the reader a clue as to whether it has any validity.

Is there really a federal regulation stipulating that nothing that police agencies compile — pictures, notes, phone logs, anything — can be kept unless it pertains to a specific criminal investigation? I find it really hard to believe that such a sweeping regulation exists. Now, mind you, my question is not purely rhetorical. I have certainly asked such questions before, with great incredulity, only to find out that yes, believe it or not, the answer is ‘yes.’ It just doesn’t sound true to me, though — and I think the failure to mention any specific regulation and the, shall we say, diminishing credibility of the source [DPS] makes me think so even more.

If this “regulation” does in fact exist, it isn’t used all that much:

It also was not immediately revealed today whether the DPS had ever before destroyed documents under the federal regulations it cited in its prepared statement.

I’m finding it harder and harder to not lapse into Dana Carvey mode and make with the “How Conveeeeenient” asides, let me tell you.

The Texas Department of Public Safety is under heavy criticism for how it handled the search for the missing Democratic legislators last week, with allegations of harassment of the legislators’ families and misleading the Department of Homeland Security about Pete Laney’s plane. In response to the accusations, the DPS has announced that it has destroyed all records related to their actions last week.

“We can maintain intelligence information only if there is a reasonable suspicion that the individual is involved in criminal activity and the information is relevant to that criminal activity,” an agency statement said.

“Any kind of intelligence information that we can maintain or disseminate must not be used in violation of the privacy and constitutional rights of individuals.”

The unsigned DPS statement said the Democratic walkout on May 12 was not a criminal investigation so the agency could not legally maintain the information. The order to destroy the documents came on May 15.

I’m just speechless. There’s no way you can spin this as protecting privacy because the people whose privacy would be affected by the investigation are the ones who are demanding it. This is a hamhanded coverup, as clumsy and bullheaded as torching a jewelry store to hide evidence of a burglary. I can’t imagine anything the DPS could have done that would have been less likely to make this issue go away.

Of course, they’re not the only ones who are stonewalling:

Congressional Democrats also raised questions May 14 about whether the DPS misused a federal Homeland Security Department agency in searching for former Speaker Pete Laney’s airplane the day of the walkout.

A DPS officer had called the Air and Marine Interdiction Coordination Center asking for help locating Laney’s aircraft.

The federal agency last Thursday put out a statement saying the DPS had mislead the interdiction service into believing it was searching for an aircraft that was missing and had possibly crashed.

Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge has refused to release tapes of the telephone call from DPS.

The Fort Worth Star Telegram has a fuller story that names the person responsible for giving the order to destroy:

AUSTIN – One day before Democrats ended their boycott of the Texas House last week, the Texas Department of Public Safety ordered the destruction of all records and photos gathered in the search for them, documents obtained Tuesday show.

A one-sentence order sent by e-mail on the morning of May 14 was apparently carried out, a DPS spokesman said Tuesday. The revelation comes as federal authorities are investigating how a division of the federal Homeland Security Department was dragged into the hunt for the missing Democrats — at the request of the state police agency.

Addressed to “Captains,” the order said: “Any notes, correspondence, photos, etc. that were obtained pursuant to the absconded House of Representative members shall be destroyed immediately. No copies are to be kept. Any questions please contact me.”

It was signed by the commander of the DPS Special Crimes Service, L.C. “Tony” Marshall.

As vile as this act is, it’s not clear that it’s a crime:

State law generally requires that records be kept for a certain period of time, but it was unclear late Tuesday how those guidelines would affect DPS’ actions.

Angela Hale, spokeswoman for Attorney General Greg Abbott, a Republican, said it would be a crime to destroy records that had been requested under the Texas Open Records Act. It could not be determined late Tuesday if there was a standing request for the records before they were destroyed.

Hale said destroying records before state guidelines allow it would not be within the purview of the attorney general.

Rob Wiley, past president of the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas, said it may not be a crime, but it is not how state agencies typically handle records.

“As a general rule, government agencies don’t destroy records this quickly … that is very unusual,” he said.

“A reasonable person would certainly believe that somebody thinks something ought to be hidden,” Wiley said. “The likelihood was there was some kind of attempt to use the governmental processes for what was clearly a partisan political issue.”

This AP wire story notes that there was a request for the DPS information:

State Reps. Lon Burnam, Yvonne Davis and Timoteo Garza — members of the House law enforcement committee who were among the fleeing lawmakers — filed a Texas Public Information Act request Monday seeking all printed and electronic documents about the DPS involvement in the search.

By Monday all of the records were already destroyed, though of course that was not yet known. Whether a Texas Public Information Act request meets the standard that Attorney General Abbott’s spokeswoman mentioned for a criminal case is something I couldn’t say. Bear in mind, though, that when these reps asked about these records at a Public Safety Commission meeting, they were not told they had been destroyed.

Democratic Reps. Lon Burnam, Yvonne Davis and Timoteo Garza filed a Texas Public Information Act request Monday seeking all printed and electronic documents about how the agency searched after the legislators didn’t show up for the House session May 12.

But officials did not answer Burnam’s questions during a Public Safety Commission meeting Tuesday, saying a response would not be appropriate because it was during the public comment period.

“It was very gracious and polite stonewalling,” said Burnam, D-Fort Worth.

So if this was during the public comment period, then why had the records already been destroyed? That doesn’t add up.

On a side note, Josh Marshall outlines Tom DeLay’s role in all this, in DeLay’s own words, here.