State orders City Hall computers secured in e-mail dispute

By Michael Levenson and Donovan Slack, Globe Staff

Secretary of State William F. Galvin's office has ordered the city of Boston to immediately secure City Hall computers and hire an independent computer forensics expert to retrieve emails that were improperly deleted by Mayor Thomas M. Menino's top policy aide.

The head of the public records division of Galvin's office, Alan N. Cote, wrote in a letter to Menino's chief lawyer that the demand was based on the "credible belief" that the aide, Michael J. Kineavy, violated the state public records law by routinely deleting emails in such a way that copies would not be preserved by city servers. Cote said his office received copies of 300 emails today listing Kineavy as a sender or recipient and sent via city computers "which now appear to have been improperly deleted."

The public records law requires municipal employees to save electronic correspondence for at least two years, even if the contents are of "no informational or evidential value." Penalties include fines of up to $500 or prison sentences of up to one year.

Cote ordered the city to hire "a qualified independent and competent technology expert to employ all reasonable means of recovering and restoring the missing records." He said a full inventory of the missing records must be delivered to him within the next 10 days.

Menino administration officials, prompted by a public records request from the Globe, have acknowledged that Kineavy was deleting his emails on a daily basis and copies were not saved on city servers. Kineavy is one of Menino's most powerful and trusted advisers, intimately involved in nearly everything at City Hall, but a search of city computers found just 18 e-mails he had sent or received between Oct. 1, 2008, and March 31 of this year.

Menino's chief lawyer, William Sinnott, said today that he had not received the letter from Galvin's office and so could not comment.

Kineavy was cited in a federal corruption indictment against former state senator Dianne Wilkerson as the mayoral "aide" whom Wilkerson spoke with to get help securing a liquor license for a prospective bar owner, according to two public officials briefed on the case. The bar owner was actually working undercover for the FBI and paying Wilkerson thousands of dollars to help win the license.

Federal prosecutors have said the Menino administration was not the target of an investigation. But as part of its investigation, the FBI subpoeaned e-mails from City Hall, and Kineavy's were within the scope of that subpoena, said the two officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the federal investigation.

Sinnott said today that Kineavy has deleted e-mails on a daily basis for the past five years in a way that they were not backed up on city servers and therefore copies of all e-mails were not turned over to the FBI in response to the subpoena. He said the Menino administration didn't realize at the time that any of Kineavy's e-mails may have been missing from what was turned over, and the FBI "never asked for more."

The e-mails have emerged as a hotly contested issue in the mayoral race as next Tuesday's preliminary election nears. Menino's challengers -- City Councilors Michael F. Flaherty Jr. and Sam Yoon, and South End businessman Kevin McCrea -- hammered away at the incumbent today over the issue at a joint press conference at City Hall Plaza.