Why would Huckabee erase all hard drives before he left office in Arkansas?

[babylonsister]

Since I haven't been following his campaign at all, this was news to me (heard on WA Journal this a.m.). That sounds like a pretty flagrant violation. Makes me wonder what they're hiding and if people from Arkansas are aware of this.

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2007/11/21/as_he_gains_in_polls_huckabee.html

snip//

But now, a darker narrative is emerging.

In addition to Huckabee's record on taxes--for which he has been hammered mercilessly by the Club for Growth--rival campaigns are now peddling information about Huckabee's personal ethics.

Reporters are being directed to years-old ethics complaints in Arkansas, including the inappropriate use of government computers, planes and PAC money.

One of the ethics accusations continues to dog Huckabee: a lawsuit over the destruction of hard drives as his administration left the governor's office in January. Huckabee asked a judge to dismiss the suit in August.

The former governor's critics are also hoping to draw the nation's attention to Huckabee's advocacy on behalf of a pardon for convict Wayne Dumond, who later committed other crimes. Huckabee has said the decision to pardon Dumond was not his.

In a statement, Huckabee's campaign said that he is being "unfairly attacked regarding his ethics history while governor of Arkansas." And on a recent appearance on Fox News, he said he will persevere through the attacks.

[sam sarrha]

1. the decision to pardon Wayne wasn't his.. probably was the Mafia's decision then

[SpiralHawk]

2. "Smirk, you forget, I'm a republicon. Smirk." - Huckster

"Dead hard drives tell no tales. Smirk." - Huckster

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. Not just 'erase' - 'erase and crush'

A vocal critic of former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee said there are tape backups of some of the computer hard drives Huckabee had crushed at the end of his term in order to keep the information stored there from the public and the press — and he has documentation that seems to prove it.

As you'll remember, in early January 2007, as his tenure as governor ran out, Huckabee ordered his staff to electronically wipe and then crush the hard drives of almost 100 laptop and desktop computers in the governor's office (soon after taking office, incoming governor Mike Beebe had to allocate $335,000 from his operating fund to buy new hard drives and computers to replace those crushed by his successor). At the time, Huckabee said that the decision to crush the hard drives was made in order to protect the privacy of those who had personal information on the drives. Critics, however, recalled that early in Huckabee's term as governor, documents, e-mails and memos stored on hard drives just like the ones that were destroyed formed the basis of embarrassing stories about Huckabee, including a 1998 story in the Arkansas Times detailing how Huckabee and his family were using the $60,000-a-year Governor's Mansion fund as their personal piggy bank. As revealed in documents provided to the Times by a former governor's office employee, the Huckabee family had used the mansion fund — which was supposed to be used only for purchases related to official state business — to buy everything from pantyhose and dog houses to meals out and loaves of Velveeta cheese.

Jim Parsons is a political rabble-rouser from Bella Vista (if you want proof that he isn't just another partisan hit man working for the Democrats, check out his new book, “Hillary and Other Bullies,” which he said will be out soon). In July, after two complaints he submitted to the state Ethics Commission over the crushed hard drives were dismissed, Parsons filed a civil lawsuit against Huckabee, even though new attorney general Dustin McDaniel had refused to file criminal charges in the case. Though Huckabee's lawyers asked a judge to dismiss Parsons' lawsuit in late August, as of this writing it is still pending.

One of the more interesting documents that Parsons has found while researching his lawsuit is a memo from Arkansas Department of Information Systems chief technology officer Gary Underwood to then-governor Huckabee. In the memo, dated January 9, 2007, Underwood states that the hard drives in question have been crushed. No news there. More interesting, however, are the bulleted notes just below that item, in which Underwood writes that tape backups of the governor's office network drives “have been delivered to a designee of your office,” and that “a mirror image of the network drives has been created, and the mirror drives have been delivered to a designee of your office.” At the bottom, the memo is signed by Huckabee chief of staff Brenda Turner, who lists herself as the designee of the office of governor Mike Huckabee. According to Parsons, his calls to DIS have found that the last anyone saw of the backup tapes, Turner was putting them into the trunk of her car and driving away.

http://www.arktimes.com/Articles/ArticleViewer.aspx?ArticleID=29b3f942-6cd2-4e6f-984a-61dbfba5bf42

$335,000 to replace almost 100 computers means some pretty expensive computers. I suppose if they bought full price Microsoft software for them all, and the price includes the work of setting it all up, then I could see the cost approaching that. Just wiping the data, and re-installing the software might be one thing, but crushing what must have been state property seems a bit, um, illegal, to me.

[babylonsister]

5. And this guy is a contender? Were I running against him, I'd be

screeching this from the rooftops! I guess the man of the cloth strayed a bit. :eyes:

[spotbird]

10. He's a sleeper

so his corruption has remained off the radar.

What's funny about him is his corruption was all for personal gain. It's a hillbilly sort of theft, nothing major, and not Republican enough to get a pass in the long run.

[1corona4u]

6. And, let's not for get...

that he wanted to give an early release to a 3 time convicted rapist, who had his genitals cut off by "two masked men". After his release, the rapist went on to kill a woman. Huckabee's Lt. gov. decided that they didn't have and DNA evidence, while the jury found him guilty, obviously because they had eyewitness testimony. More below;


"After DuMond physically recovered from his injuries he finally attended his rape trial. Even though DNA evidence recovered from the crime failed to link DuMond to the rape, the victim was able to positively identify him as her attacker. The victim's testimony was enough for the jury who later found him guilty of rape and sentenced him to life plus 20 years in prison.

In 1992, former Lieutenant Governor Jim Guy Tucker reduced DuMond's sentence to 39 years, which made him eligible for parole, David Lieb said in an AP Online article. In 1996, Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee planned to release DuMond from prison based on a lack of sufficient DNA evidence related to the rape investigation. However, he "abandoned his plan" after a public outcry and denied DuMond clemency, Stearns said. In 1999, DuMond was released from prison on parole but his freedom was short-lived.

In January 2004, DuMond was sentenced again to life in prison for the 2000 murder of Carol Sue Shields, 39. Shields was found bound and suffocated "on the bed in the apartment of a man with whom she had been having an affair," Dana Fields said in an AP Online article. DNA evidence, which was found under the victim's nails, linked DuMond to the crime. Aside from the 1985 rape conviction, DuMond had also been previously arrested for sexual assaults in 1972, 1973 and in 1976.

http://www.crimelibrary.com/criminal_mind/sexual_assault/severed_penis/7.html

I find this outrageous. The only thing that stopped Huckabee, was a public outcry!!

[NV Whino]

7. Buying loaves of Velveeta cheese

alone is enough to bury him, much less buying them with with the governor's mansion fund.

[The Backlash Cometh]

11. Not one word about destruction of public property.

You'd think that would be enough to hang him up in court.

[lynnertic]

16. $335K covers the computers and the manpower to set them up.

people keep forgetting about the manpower.

[Kucinich4America]

17. If I were a repuke, he would have just lost my vote.

You can completely erase hard drives. There's no need to crush them and throw them in a landfill. Huckleberry should have hired better IT people.

[Demeter]

4. Just Because He's Paranoid Doesn't Mean Nobody's Out to Get Him

After what happened to Clinton, and the crimes BushCheneyCo has pulled, I would do the same!

[slater71]

8. Bush did the same thing.

He moved all his Texas records to his old man`s library where they remain today, never to be seen. Howard Dean did it I believe and I am sure alot of others. It does not make it right though.

[Crabby Appleton]

9. It is actually common to destroy drives for security purposes

I work in data security for a large multi-national manufacturer, we remove and destroy the hard drives of all systems that we decommission (by drilling holes through the case and platters).

because of incidents like this:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/08/30/governors_data_sold_on_ebay/

http://www.e-health-insider.com/news/3063/patient_records_found_on_drive_sold_on_ebay

http://www.computerworld.com/securitytopics/security/story/0,10801,111148,00.html


There are companies that make and sell hard drive crushers for this purpose, see this link:

http://www.edrsolutions.com/problem.asp

In January 2003, some researchers at MIT bought 158 used, random disk drives from an online store and found that 60% of them had data still intact. Additionally, these same researchers found 5,000 credit card numbers on these disks.

[muriel_volestrangler]

13. But that's drives being decommissioned

The story says the incoming governor (ironically, the one in the Register story) had to spend a lot of money replacing the computers and drives that were trashed.

It should be possible to completely reformat a hard disk, and reinstall everything; and there are surely programs which will wipe all unused portions of a disk, too.

[pacalo]

12. These Rethugs...hmmph. They flagrantly break the law & "ask judges to dismiss" the charges.

And it's so "unfair"!

[Blue_In_AK]

14. I don't trust Huckabee

(among many other reasons) because Don Young, king of sleeze, was chairman of his House "run for president" exploratory committee. Anybody that tight with Young is up to no good.

[snowbear]

15. Tweety & Craig Crawford said there was some damning info coming out on Hucks..

Not sure if they were talking about the items in that WAPO article or what..

We'll know soon enough.