State Suspends 2 Who Saved Tapes for FBI

The day after the FBI raided Capitol offices last month, a legislative employee noticed a tenfold increase in the purging of documents from the legislative computer system and acted quickly to save the material for federal investigators, it was disclosed Thursday.

Three weeks later, another legislative employee was ordered to erase the saved tapes, but refused and notified the FBI.

For their efforts in helping the federal investigation of Capitol political corruption, the two employees have been placed on two weeks’ administrative leave with pay, pending a legislative probe of their actions, it also was disclosed.

Paul Huelskamp, who works in the legislative data center, confirmed that he and co-worker Michael E. Parr were suspended by the legislative counsel’s office pending the outcome of an internal investigation.

Parr, a 15-year state employee and a data processing supervisor, refused an order by his superiors to erase the computer tapes, feeling it could be construed as an obstruction of justice, Huelskamp told The Times. Gannett News Service, which broke the story Thursday, quoted Parr as saying: “At some point, you just can’t go over the line, and for me, this crossed well over.”

Huelskamp is the employee who noticed that “there was a tenfold increase in deletions” from the Legislature’s computer system on the day after the FBI searched Capitol offices, a source in the legislative counsel’s office told The Times.

The legislative counsel’s office operates the computer system, which contains thousands of files from Democratic and Republican legislative offices.

Instead of the typical 70 to 80 computer deletions, Huelskamp discovered 750 to 800. The employee quickly extended the life of backup tapes until the end of the year. Normally, they would have been automatically erased after 14 days.

“I thought it might be useful for the FBI,” said Huelskamp, who has worked in the computer center for four years.

The Times has reported that staffers in the Assembly Republican Caucus on the day after the FBI raid purged and printed out computer files containing politically sensitive information that GOP legislative sources said was prepared on state time and with state equipment.

The GOP sources said that the caucus staffers, aware it is illegal to conduct political campaigns with public resources, were worried that FBI agents would discover the material in the state computer.

Legislative Counsel Bion M. Gregory, who suspended the employees, refused to be interviewed on the matter Thursday. “I don’t have any comment. I’m not commenting at all,” he said.

A data processing center employee said: “We’ve been instructed not to say anything to the press.”

One legislative counsel’s employee, who asked not to be identified, said the FBI now has collected 13 backup tapes containing 300,000 documents, including all those that had been purged by GOP staffers.

The legislative counsel, according to the source, ordered the internal investigation because he felt the traditional lawyer-client relationship may have been violated by the employees. The legislative counsel is the lawyer for the Legislature and also controls the computer system.