Boston posts 5,000 Kineavy e-mails on Web

By Globe Staff

The City of Boston today posted on its website scans of approximately 5,000 e-mails sent to and from mayoral aide Michael J. Kineavy. The e-mails are at the heart of a burgeoning controversy over the city's handling of public records. The controversy led to Kineavy's decision earlier this week to take an unpaid leave of absence from the mayor's office.

Mayoral aide Michael Kineavy

Kineavy's e-mails were the subject of a federal subpoena as part of a corruption investigation, and a Boston Globe public records request in connection with a story about the administration of Mayor Thomas M. Menino.

After the city received the records requests, city officials revealed that Kineavy had been double-deleting all of his e-mails every day, despite a state law requiring preservation of public records for two years.

The 5,000 e-mails posted today are from computers of other city employees who exchanged e-mail with Kineavy. The city has said it would be expensive to retrieve much of the deleted e-mail, which would be available only by recovering data from the two hard drives Kineavy used over the last two years, but that it will retrieve "everything possible,'' turn it over to investigators, and make it public. Also, the city says it has now turned over to Secretary of State William F. Galvin a hard drive containing copies of Kineavy's two hard drives.

The city has posted an explanation of its handling of the requests for the e-mails here and the texts of the Kineavy e-mails here.

The Globe's coverage of the e-mails is here, including a story reviewing the contents of the 5,000 e-mails here.