Ex-Blunt aid recorded meeting at which he was fired

ST. LOUIS (AP) -- A former staff attorney for Gov. Matt Blunt says a recording of a meeting in which he was fired supports his assertions that he warned top Blunt staffers the office may be violating record-retention laws.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported Thursday that it has obtained a copy of the 39-minute recording secretly made by former Blunt staffer Scott Eckersley during a Sept. 28 meeting in which he was fired by Blunt's then-chief of staff, Ed Martin.

Eckersley said the meeting with Martin was the culmination of a series of events that began Sept. 20, when he said he e-mailed Martin, Blunt spokesman Rich Chrismer and Blunt's chief legal counsel Henry Herschel to raise concerns that the governor's office may have been making inaccurate public statements about its duties to save e-mails.

The next day, Eckersley and Herschel, his supervisor, had a heated meeting that Eckersley said involved the e-mail he had sent.

"Henry was upset because of my continued insistence that we weren't following Sunshine Law," Eckersley said in an interview with the Post-Dispatch.

Herschel, who now is an administrative law judge handling workers' compensation cases, has declined to comment about Eckersley.

After Eckersley's meeting with Herschel, his access to e-mail was severed at Martin's request, and Eckersley said he took a recorder with him to the Sept. 28 meeting because of warnings he might be fired.

At the beginning of their conversation, Martin brought up the Sunshine Law. He said he had heard Eckersley was threatening to leave his job "with guns blazing."

Former Blunt speechwriter Jonathan Bunch "is e-mailing me: 'Eckersley's going to go ape-(expletive) and take down the governor. Eckersley is going to go Sunshine,"' Martin said on the tape.

Eckersley said he can't be held accountable for what other people were speculating.

Then Martin told him he was "not taking sides" in the dispute between Herschel and Eckersley. But Martin said Eckersley could no longer work for the governor. He cited three reasons: the blowup with Herschel; some e-mails from an adult sex Web site that showed up in a review of Eckersley's government e-mail account; and work Eckersley was doing for his father's business during office hours.

Eckersley did not dispute the allegations but tried to explain them. The e-mails had been forwarded to his state account by his brother Jason Eckersley, he said. Herschel, Eckersley said, had approved the family work.

In his taped conversation with Martin, Eckersley explained his heated exchanged with Herschel: "This was about me sending an e-mail to you, which I've done several times, where things are being overlooked. This was me trying to say: We're saying this, and it's not that."

Martin: "You're not (expletive) right. And it's not your role, so -- "

Eckersley: "How am I not right?"

Martin: "You're not right on any of this (expletive). You were told not to send e-mails to me and you decided to do it anyway. It's called insubordination to your direct supervisor. It doesn't matter if you get a revelation from God on what's going on in your life or anybody else's."

Neither Eckersley nor Martin specifically mentioned the Sunshine Law or e-mail retention in that exchange. But Eckersley and his attorney, Jeff Bauer, say the meaning is obvious.

"I think it's consistent with everything Scott has said from the beginning," Bauer told the Post-Dispatch. "There's no question in my mind given the context and the statement that he's talking about Sunshine Law."

Frank Neuner, an attorney for Martin, said: "We believe that when all the facts come out in the matter that Ed Martin will be vindicated."

Blunt's current legal counsel, Lowell Pearson, said the absence of any reference to the Sunshine Law in that excerpt from the recording "undermines Eckersley's claims."

"It seems to me they could be talking about any topic, including the weather," Pearson said.

Documents previously released by the governor's office indicate that the discussion may have been about the Sunshine Law and e-mail retention.

On Oct. 26, Office of Administration deputy commissioner Rich AuBuchon released a statement saying that e-mail retention had come up in the Sept. 28 meeting between Eckersley and Martin.

Eckersley "spoke about his role in the general counsel's office and asserted for the first time his views about the policy of record retention," AuBuchon's letter said.

The Blunt administration has consistently denied that Eckersley raised concerns about its handling of e-mails before Sept. 28.

AuBuchon told The Associated Press on Oct. 30 that "Mr. Eckersley never once voiced a concern, never once wrote an e-mail, never once talked to other employees in the office evidencing any concern that the governor's office was not complying with the Sunshine Law or any record retention policies."

Eckersley has sued Blunt, Martin, Herschel, Chrismer and AuBuchon for wrongful firing and defamation.

Attorney General Jay Nixon also has appointed an investigative team to look into allegations of Sunshine Law violations in the governor's office. Nixon's appointed investigators sued Blunt earlier this week, seeking access to the state's backup e-mail files.

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Information from: St. Louis Post-Dispatch, http://www.stltoday.com