Records released by the Easley administration show that until recently, several public information officers deleted most of their e-mail messages to and from top officials in the governor's press office.

Gov. Mike Easley, in a meeting with editors of The News & Observer and The Charlotte Observer earlier this month, conceded that the heads of the public information offices in various agencies thought they had been told to delete everything to or from his press office, but he said they didn't do it.

"The good news is, in spite of all that, they all kept their stuff like they were supposed to," Easley said. "They all followed the [correct] policy and said, 'I know this was the direction, but I'm not doing it.' "

But at least three public information officers did delete e-mail as they had been instructed to do last May 29 by Renee Hoffman, the governor's press secretary. Ernie Seneca, Keith Acree and Julia Jarema, the head public information officers at the Departments of Transportation, Correction, and Crime Control and Public Safety, collectively saved more e-mail messages to or from the governor's press office in March than they did in the previous nine months combined. E-mail retained by other spokesmen show that Hoffman also deleted many of the e-mail messages she sent or received.

Andrew Vanore, the governor's counsel, said in an interview that he had instructed those involved not to discuss their e-mail pending the resolution of a public records lawsuit filed earlier this month by The News & Observer and nine other news organizations. The lawsuit asserts that the administration's policy and practice involving retention of e-mail violates the state's public records law.

Vanore said he assumed that every e-mail message deleted was in accordance with the record retention policy of that agency.

"We look forward to successfully defending the lawsuit, including the policy which allows employees to delete e-mail messages when their administrative value ends," he said in an interview.

The Easley administration's policy, approved by the Department of Cultural Resources, allows individual employees to decide whether to discard e-mail messages; the standard is whether they still have value to the employee who is in possession of the e-mail.

Vanore declined to answer questions about why most of the e-mail messages sent or received by Seneca, Acree and Jarema were dated March 2008 and so few were written or received by them in the nine previous months, from June 2007 through February.

The allegation that public information officers had been instructed to delete e-mail -- which the Governor's Office and his chief legal counsel, Reuben F. Young, initially denied -- surfaced March 4 after the governor approved the dismissal of Debbie Crane, who had been head of the public information office at the Department of Health and Human Services.

At The N&O's request, Vanore turned over notes of meetings of public information officers, including a May 29 meeting attended by Jarema and Diane Kees, public information officer at the Department of Environment and Natural Resources. Their notes of that meeting say they were instructed to delete all e-mail to or from the governor's press office. Vanore also gave the newspaper a box full of e-mail messages that he said were written by or sent to Hoffman, Jarema or Kees.

In a March 29 letter to Hugh Stevens, an N&O attorney, Vanore said those records were evidence that e-mail messages that "needed to be preserved as public records" were retained.

"I am confident that e-mails to and from the governor's press office have not been systematically destroyed," Vanore's letter said.

The N&O examined the e-mail messages given to the newspaper by Vanore and found:

* Seneca, at DOT, saved two e-mail messages that he received from the governor's press office in March; he saved a total of four in the previous nine months. E-mail retained by Hoffman show that she sent to or received from Seneca at least 97 e-mail messages during that 10-month period.

* Acree saved 18 e-mail messages that he sent to or received from the governor's press office in March, eight in February and none in the previous eight months. During those 10 months, e-mail saved by Hoffman alone show that she sent or received at least 33 e-mail messages from Acree.

* Jarema saved 59 e-mail messages she sent to or received from the governor's press office in March, compared to 44 in the previous nine months. Vanore said earlier that "about 20 pages" of her e-mail came from a server, meaning that she had deleted them from her personal computer but a duplicate was saved on another computer. During those 10 months, Hoffman alone sent to or received 141 e-mail messages from Jarema.

Kees appears to have ignored the instructions to delete her e-mail. During that 10-month period, she saved 368 e-mail messages, most of them in 2007.

Kees' e-mail indicated that Hoffman may have deleted most of her e-mail. Kees saved 334 e-mail messages that she sent to or received from Hoffman during that 10 months, but Hoffman saved only 107 e-mail messages to or from Kees.

(News researcher Brooke Cain and database editor David Raynor contributed to this report.)