Surely young Mike Easley, growing up in the days of "decoder rings" and X-ray glasses and invisible ink, most available from cereal boxes, was fully equipped for life as a secret agent. Want to bet he was an accomplished hide-and-go-seek gamer as well?
During his tenure as governor, Easley displayed a secretive side, spending a lot of time at his home in Southport and confiding in a relative few number of aides. He had little use for the customary glad-handing that came with the office, and he certainly was not one to share his thoughts on decision-making with many people - especially not with the media. It was, his staff members came to accept, the way he was.
But as claimed in a deposition in a public records lawsuit filed by The News & Observer, The Charlotte Observer and several other news organizations, Easley's fondness for keeping things close to the vest included a wish to have e-mail messages to and from his office deleted so they would not become public. Though different former communications officials with Easley disagree on who said what to whom, a deposition from Renee Hoffman, former press secretary, said such an instruction came directly from Sherri Creech Johnson, former communications director.
That mirrors what Debbie Crane, a former Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson, said in 2008, when she was fired by the Easley administration. At the time, an Easley spokesman, Seth Effron, criticized Crane as "dishonest, untruthful and insubordinate." Crane had been with DHHS at the time a News & Observer series on mental health reform showed mismanagement of reform by Easley's administration.
In her deposition in the lawsuit, Sherri Johnson said Effron's words were "dictated ... word for word" by Easley. That is appalling.
Ah, but there's more intrigue. The address of Easley's private e-mail account included "Nick Danger" spelled backwards, Danger having been a radio private eye in the 1960s. The public has been aware of the account, which Easley has said might have contained some minor matters linked to state business but was mostly for personal communications. Whether involving minor matters or not, communications to or from the governor bearing on state business should have been disclosed under North Carolina's public records law.
Amid a broad federal investigation of gifts and favors Easley may have received from friends and political supporters, and of what his administration might have done for them, the governor's private e-mail account is more important, as are the policies regarding e-mail during his administration. The public has a right to know what was in Easley's account. (The former governor did, before leaving office, set more strict policies on e-mail retention for his successors.)
Mike Easley's affable public persona, which served him well in successful campaigns for attorney general and governor, contrasted with the fact that he was in reality a very private person. But Easley appears to have gone further than a desire for personal privacy. That leaves the public to wonder if there are secrets and stories yet untold.
