Corbett Seeks Details In Porn Office Emails Scandal
HARRISBURG, Pa. (KDKA/AP) - Gov. Tom Corbett has asked for records of interoffice emails containing pornography that were apparently exchanged among former employees of the state attorney general's office, including two men who are now his top aides.
The Thursday night letter from Corbett's top human resources officer, Secretary of Administration Kelly Powell Logan, was sent hours after Attorney General Kathleen Kane's office identified the eight ex-employees and disclosed contents of the emails.
Kane is a Democrat who took office last year. The men all worked under Corbett, a Republican, when he was the attorney general. Most of them went on to work for him as governor.
In the request, Logan asked Kane for the contents of the emails and details about the email chain, including the dates, times and recipients. Logan also sought details about whether and when the email was opened or deleted.
In a statement after Kane released the information, Corbett said the pornographic material, as described by media outlets, was inappropriate and should not be tolerated in the workplace.
A spokeswoman said Friday that Kane's office had received the letter but had no immediate response. Kane's office has already said that it cannot determine whether the men opened the emails they received.
Hundreds of pornographic emails sent from 2008 to 2012 were discovered during Kane's review of the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse prosecution, her office said.
Among the ex-employees identified by Kane's office as recipients of the emails are two top state officials: Environmental Protection Secretary Christopher Abruzzo and State Police Commissioner Frank Noonan.
Noonan is in the midst of directing a massive manhunt for a survivalist accused of the Sept. 12 fatal ambush of a trooper at a state police barracks in northeastern Pennsylvania's Pocono Mountains.
Noonan received 338 pornographic emails and sent none, and Abruzzo received 46 and sent eight, Kane's office said. Noonan was the office's chief of criminal investigations, and Abruzzo formerly supervised the attorney general's drug strike force section.
Most of the men identified by Kane's office have stayed silent.
One of them, Randy Feathers, a former agent who Corbett appointed to the Pennsylvania Board of Probation and Parole, said in a statement through the board that the images shown to reporters "were not a reflection of my professional behavior and I don't condone this activity."
A combative Gov. Corbett reacted to the revelations Friday in Pittsburgh by accusing Kane of prematurely releasing half-baked information.
"I want all the facts, and when I conduct investigations when I did it as attorney general we just didn't release the information piecemeal," said Gov. Corbett. "And when I had all the fact, then we made a decision as to what we could and couldn't release."
Accused are current and former members of Corbett's staff, both when he was attorney general and then governor.
But while Kane named names of people who had porn on their computers, she did not specify whether they had sent or received the email or even whether they even opened them, prompting Corbett to write her a letter.
It says in part: "Whether or when the email was opened, whether or when it was deleted, if it the email was deleted without being opened."
Still, the specter of porn circulating on government computers is an unwelcome issue as the governor campaign for re-election winds down.
KDKA's Andy Sheehan: "There seems to be a circulation of this pornography through the computers of members of your current staff and your former staff."
Gov. Corbett: "Andy, I need the facts. One thing is clear, I didn't receive them, I didn't know about it. I think I made a statement a couple of weeks ago, had I known about it I would have been ballistic and I would have stopped it right then and there. But I didn't know about it, so now I need the facts, and the only person who has the facts at this point, that I know of, is the attorney general."
Kane has defended her decision to release the names as being in the public's best interest to understand how its public servants conduct business. Being transparent on the matter is a good way to help stop the practice on state-owned equipment during official work hours, she said in a statement.
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