The truth will out, and these days it does so electronically
Tom Baxter
Editor, Southern Political Report
March 12, 2008 —
It’s not that the beans haven’t always found a way to spill themselves. The truth will out, as the old saying goes. But the special quality of our age is that we have developed such highly sophisticated new means by which we can unintentionally reveal ourselves. We’re speaking, of course, of the spectacular demise of New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, who was caught out by some of the same banking account tracking practices he used as attorney general of his state. That blunder, complete with wiretaps and text messages from the hooker alluding to his sexual preferences, brought the crusading Democrat down. But it’s interesting to note that even before Spitzer learned of the investigation which ensnared him, his office was refusing to respond to a subpoena for emails related to the used of state troopers in an effort to discredit a Republican foe, New York Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno. It isn’t nearly as sexy a story, but consider what happened just a couple of weeks ago in Mississippi. After he and State Farm agreed to the dismissal of a suit the insurance company had brought against him, Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood’s office put out a press release denying that this amounted to a settlement, and he wrote an op-ed claiming victory in the Jackson Clarion-Ledger. Irritated, a lawyer for State Farm emailed her colleagues wondering if the company shouldn’t request that Hood be held in contempt of court for misrepresenting the terms of the settlement in what has been a long and difficult case for the company. Or she thought she did. The email went to a dozen reporters and Hood’s press secretary, and relations between the former litigants were back to shaky. The attorney, by the way, was a partner in one of the big New York law firms. That’s the really fun thing about the indiscretions revealed via electronic gadgets: They often ensnare those who can afford the best gadgets first, and never quite figure out how to use them. Hardly a week goes by, it seems, that somewhere in America there’s another story about a mayor who gets caught text-messaging mash notes to an aide, a government official arrested for lurking in a teen chat room, or a campaign manager resigns after being fingered for messing with somebody’s Wikipedia entry. When Harris County (Texas) District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal resigned last month, he blamed a combination of drugs he’d been taking on the trove of offensive emails, including evidence of racial bias in jury selections, illegal political activity and love notes to his secretary, which brought about his downfall. Be that as it may, the evidence was all there on his hard drive. A federal judge unintentionally unsealed the emails long enough for them to become public, and Rosenthal, one of the best-known legal figures in Texas, was a goner. The scandal that sunk former Kentucky Gov. Ernie Fletcher’s chances of re-election was known as Blackberry Jam, because that’s how the incriminating evidence got disseminated. Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt, who’s already announced he’s not seeking another term after a scandal over his office’s unsanctioned destruction of emails, is currently locked in a battle with the Missouri attorney general’s office over the release of thousands more potentially damaging emails. Whenever another one of these cases happens, we ask ourselves, didn’t they know that text-message could be traced? Weren’t they aware they could be sending that message to half the town? How could they write what could be traced back to them? But every age has had the means by which the unwary can slip. Ours are just a little slicker.
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