Thursday, May 22, 2003

Texas Deleted Documents About Search for Democrats
The fight over the flight of Democratic legislators intensified yesterday as the Texas Department of Public Safety admitted it had destroyed documents that were collected last week as state troopers searched for the missing lawmakers.
What started out as a local partisan dispute about redistricting escalated into accusations of a cover-up and abuse of federal power.

Indeed, federal authorities are investigating how the Department of Homeland Security became involved in the search for the lawmakers.

Today's uproar began after The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported that a commander at the Department of Public Safety issued an e-mail notice instructing that all "notes, correspondence, photos, etc." concerning the search "be destroyed immediately."

"It just doesn't smell right," said State Representative Garnet F. Coleman of Houston, a leader of the move by 51 Democrats to go to Oklahoma to deny House Republicans a quorum for a vote on redistricting.

"Clearly, there's some people trying to remove information, or delete information, that is damaging to their reputation," Mr. Coleman said. "We question the motive on the destruction. And what we really want to know is, who told the Department of Public Safety to do it?"

Democrats in Texas and in the state's delegation in Washington have asked for an investigation into why the federal Department of Homeland Security was called in on the case.

The security department has begun its own inquiry and said it got involved only because it had been told that a plane carrying the lawmakers was missing or had crashed.…
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/22/national/22TEXA.html

No comments:

Post a Comment

con·cept