The RailGate Tapes - What's In A Name?

Pictured above is Rosemary Woods doing her infamous stretch to demonstrate how she accidentally erased at least part of the missing 18 minutes of the Watergate Tapes.

It turns out that Ms. Woods was no shrinking violet. In addition, she was also known, with apologies to Pete Best, as 'The Fifth Nixon':

(W)hen Nixon began his awkward tenure as Eisenhower's begrudged, and begrudging, vice president, Woods became his de facto chief of staff. She knew who was friendly and who wasn't and scheduled or stonewalled Nixon's appointments accordingly. More than "office wife," she combined solid political judgment with an ability to read the boss's moods and deliver news he didn't wish to hear. Rose Mary Woods ran the shop.

She was also a sore loser. On an eastbound train during Nixon's 1960 presidential run, she poured a drink over the head of a reporter whose articles she didn't fancy. After the election, when the triumphant John Kennedy met with Nixon at Key Biscayne, Fla., her colleagues had to peel her back from another reporter whose galling presence baited her temper.

Woods was at the dinner table the night Nixon staged a mock debate with his family about the pros and cons of running one more time, as if the issue were in doubt. A trusted confidante to Mrs. Nixon, "Aunt Rose" to Tricia and Julie, Woods was affectionately called "the fifth Nixon."...

So.

What does all this have to do with the erasure of the RailGate tapes here and now in British Columbia?

Well, at least according to Gary Mason in today's Globe, the irony of the first name of the person involved, who by all accounts is a very fine member British Columbia's public service and was very likely just doing their job, is quite astonishing:

Tapes containing the e-mail correspondence of B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell and members of his cabinet that lawyers in a government corruption trial have insisted are critical to the defence of their clients were ordered destroyed in early May, The Globe and Mail has learned.

According to several sources, the person responsible for managing the government e-mail delivery service has filed an affidavit in court that contains the potentially politically explosive information.

In her affidavit, Rosemarie Hayes, director of Messaging and Collaboration Services, Workplace Technology Services (WTS), states that at the beginning of May of this year, her department requested that backup tapes of government e-mails created prior to May of 2004 be expunged from the system. The e-mails are the subject of a legal proceeding and as such should not have been deleted, according to the government's own guidelines.

Now.

Regardless, issues of given names that actually mean little, questions of real import need to be asked regarding this matter....

First - who ordered the erasure?

And second - why would they do it this May 0f 2009 when the lawyers for the defendents had already requested the Emails that were on the tapes that were erased?

Seems a big chance to take, don't you think?

Unless, of course, those E-mails were as scary for a certain someone as, say, 18 minutes of audio tape were to a certain someone else so long ago......


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Of course, it's also possible that someone with authority in government to do so did NOTtell Ms. Hayes NOT to erase the tapes, which, given the circumstances and the timing (don't forget there was an election going on as well), would, in our books at least, be just as bad.
Oh, and for the record, koot had this one before me, in a comment over at Mary's place.

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