Whole Lotta Redactin’ Going On

The emails, released in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), are from Jackson’s pseudonymous, secondary email account under the name “Richard Windsor.”

The emails are the second of four batches of roughly 12,000 emails from the “Richard Windsor” account the EPA has been ordered to disclose.

CEI senior fellow Christopher Horner first reported the existence of Jackson’s secret email address in his book, The Liberal War on Transparency.

EPA officials heavily redacted Friday’s release, omitting all but the most mundane communications. Meeting schedules, discussions of media coverage, and nearly all other content were redacted.

The EPA relied mostly on the “deliberative process” FOIA exemption, which allows agencies to redact intra-agency communications. The argument for the rule is that disclosing internal debates could chill officials’ ability to have forthright discussions about policy.