Exposing IRS Lies About Lost Emails

Congressional investigators have been stonewalled, stiff-armed and stalled at every turn in their efforts to get to the bottom of the IRS scandal.  As a result, the probe has dragged on as precious little details have dribbled out of the agency at the heart of the controversy.

Just when investigators thought things couldn't get worse, Internal Revenue Service Commissioner John Koskinen dropped a bombshell. Thousands of potentially incriminating emails from former IRS official Lois Lerner disappeared into thin air after a computer crash, he informed Congress.   

Lerner, who directed the IRS targeting of conservative groups, was not the only agency employee whose emails dropped from sight.  Five more IRS employees also claimed their email correspondence had gone missing.  Koskinen contended none of the emails could be recovered.

This is worse than sheer nonsense.  It is a damnable lie.  Koskinen and the Obama Administration are depending on Americans' unfamiliarity with technology to perpetuate the deceit.  Republican committee members could have easily exposed the fabrication if they had been better prepared.

Ed Glotzbach, former vice chairman of Information Services Group, Inc., reviewed Koskinen's testimony and charitably called the commissioner's explanation "not credible." Glotzbach's view carries weight because of his information technology experience.

He is the former chief executive officer of TPI, Inc., a Houston based firm that is a leading sourcing advisory firm in the U.S.  Prior to that, Glotzbach served five years as the chief information officer for SBC Communications.  His duties included overseeing data center operations for the telecom firm.

"The fact that Lois Lerner's hard drive crashed is irrelevant," Glotzbach explains.  "Today virtually every large organization backs up every email on file servers.  Almost always, those servers have back-ups that shadow them.  Those emails never leave the servers."

In layman's terms, servers are like super-sized computers.  Every user's computer in the organization is linked to file servers, which store and retrieve files.  Every document and email created is stored on the server.  Most large businesses are required by federal regulations to archive correspondence for at least five years.

Federal government agencies, including the IRS, have similar document retention policies.  An examination of the IRS guidelines confirms that the agency is supposed to provide for "backup and recovery of records to protect information against loss and corruption."  

The IRS even employs a chief technology officer (CTO) who is responsible for the 400 systems operated by the agency. Inconceivably, Republicans have never called the CTO on the carpet to testify before the Congressional committee.  

That has left the pedestrian Koskinen to justify why Lois Lerner's emails cannot be retrieved.  His explanations, frankly, are dubious. "Her hard drive could be wrecked or her computer disc scratched.  It doesn't matter.  Those emails exist on the file server," Glotzbach asserts.

The emails could be easily reclaimed, Glotzbach maintains. Businesses and federal agencies are required often to produce emails and documents created by their employees as part of regulatory proceedings, lawsuits and law enforcement inquiries.  

Could IRS officials have erased the emails from the servers?  Not likely, Glotzbach explains.  "It would require more than a handful of people and there would be a trail of mechanized process control steps," Glotzbach says.  "The trail would consist of authorizations to make changes."

If Lerner's emails were not backed up on a server, then the IRS has an ever larger problem, according to Glotzbach.  "It is unfathomable that an agency with such voluminous and essential data did not regularly conduct disaster recovery exercises and evaluate the outcome," he says.

In other words, the IRS has to employ a back-up system or it could lose all taxpayer data if its computers crashed.  No business, let alone an agency dependent on records like the IRS, could risk losing all its data in the event a fire, earthquake or other disaster destroyed its computers or servers.

Despite the obvious lies, Democrats call the Congressional inquiry a political stunt.  The lemmings in the news media have refused to lift a finger to investigate the IRS commissioner's claims.  However, their efforts to squelch the Congressional investigation may have backfired. 

Now the courts are involved.  Cases have been filed with two federal district courts over the lost email issue.  In at least one instance, the judge has already demanded an explanation from the IRS.  Koskinen's coverup may about to be exposed.