Email

IRS Used Messaging Service To Avoid Email Archiving

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There’s not much more to say that what ATR lays out. In a nutshell, many IRS employees used an interoffice messaging chat system to communicate with one another, instead of email, because there was no archiving system turned on for that mode of communication — meaning there was no written trail of discussions. This methodology was discovered while looking at Lois Lerner’s emails.

From Americans for Tax Reform:

The IRS used a “wholly separate” instant messaging system that automatically deleted office communications, according to documentation released by the House Oversight Committee on Monday. The system appears to have been purposefully used by agency officials responsible for the targeting of conservative non-profits, in order to evade public scrutiny.

The system, known as “Office Communication Server” or OCS was used by IRS officials, including many in the Exempt Organizations (EO) Unit, which was headed by Lois Lerner.

As the Oversight Committee report states, the instant messaging system did not archive any communications, so it is not possible to know what employees of the EO unit discussed on it.

However, in an email uncovered by the Committee Lerner warns her colleagues about evading Congressional oversight:

“I was cautioning folks about email and how we have had several occasions where Congress has asked for emails and there has been an electronic search for responsive emails – so we need to be cautious about what we say in emails.”

Lerner then asks whether OCS is automatically archived. When informed it was not, Lerner responded “Perfect.”

While it is possible to set the instant messaging system to automatically archive messages, the IRS chose not to do so, according to one employee interviewed by the Committee. The fact that the agency chose not to archive messages raises questions about the true purpose of OCS and what discussions took place.

Needless to say, the apparent use of OCS to evade Congressional oversight once again shows that the IRS does not want the American people to learn the truth about the Lois Lerner targeting scandal.

But Wait, There’s More! Another Round of IRS Computer Crashes Reported

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First Lois Lerner’s ~~home~~ computer crashed. Then it was seven IRS employees, many who had important positions. You can read about them here. Now, according to the Daily Caller, the IRS Deputy Associate Chief Counsel Thomas Kane reported in congressional testimony that even more IRS officials succumbed to computer crashes. He estimated that the number was no more than 20. Kane also stated that the IRS does not know yet if those lost emails are backed up anywhere.

Last month in June, the IRS commissioner John Koskinen testified that he did not know of any way to get missing IRS emails back, which was in contrast to his March testimony that IRS employee emails are saved on servers. In that interim time between the two testimonies, it was learned that in September of 2011, the IRS canceled its contract with an email archiving firm after 6 years.
The names of the newest IRS crash victims include: “David Fish, who routinely corresponded with Lois Lerner, as well as Lerner subordinate Andy Megosh, Lerner’s technical adviser Justin Lowe, and Cincinnati-based agent Kimberly Kitchens”.

The IRS computer crashes happened in both Washington DC and Cincinnati. Additionally, it appears that the IRS violated the The Federal Records Act, which required IRS employees to save and also print out all of their emails related to IRS business — in the unlucky event a hard drive crashed or was deleted in an improper data recycling procedure.

UPDATE: Even as the IRS scandal continues to worsen, the IRS brazenly put out a new solicitation on Monday for “media destruction” services to destroy at least another 3,200 hard drives.

You can’t make this up.