Looking for a missing link
September 15, 2009
By: Adrian Walker
Ronald Wilburn has a keen interest in Michael Kineavy’s mysterious missing e-mails.
Wilburn was the key government informant in the federal corruption inquiry that led to the indictment of State Senator Dianne Wilkerson and City Councilor Chuck Turner. For months, Wilburn has been incensed that the investigation seemed to hit a brick wall when it reached City Hall.
Now he believes he knows why.
“What they should have found was e-mails to Kineavy,’’ he said yesterday. “I know there was communication with Kineavy.’’ Without that evidence, he theorizes, the investigation into licensing corruption stalled.
Kineavy is Thomas M. Menino’s chief of policy and planning, a title that barely begins to explain his role as chief driving force behind the Menino Machine.
Odd then, that when the Globe recently requested Kineavy’s e-mails under the Freedom of Information Act, only 18 could be produced over a six-month period. Through a city spokeswoman, Kineavy declined to be interviewed.
City officials were dismissive of accusations of wrongdoing, insisting that the missing e-mails probably contained little of substance. By now, we should all know that anything that reflects poorly on the mayor will be dismissed. That’s how they do business.
Wilkerson and Turner were indicted as part of an investigation into the granting of liquor licenses in 2007. The criminal complaint filed when Wilkerson was arrested accuses her of placing calls to Kineavy in an effort to get a license for a bar Wilburn wanted to open in Lower Roxbury. City officials have acknowledged that Kineavy’s e-mails were subpoenaed in the case.
What is not known is what – if any – response they got. A city official acknowledged yesterday that the e-mails related to that case could well have been included in the e-mails Kineavy has routinely – perhaps illegally – been deleting, while insisting that any exchanges would have come to light anyway, through subpoenas to other witnesses. “If he sent e-mails, they had to go someplace,’’ the official said. “We know for a fact that the mayor is not a target of any investigation, and neither is Michael.’’
That is entirely too facile a dismissal of the deletion of thousands of public records. It also asks the public to accept on faith that there was nothing of substance included in Kineavy’s electronic correspondence. Why should anyone accept that on faith?
This case has long since become a strange odyssey for Wilburn. He agreed to cooperate with the federal government after believing he had gotten unfair treatment from the Boston Licensing Commission in his bid for a license.
He enthusiastically furnished evidence against Wilkerson and Turner, but insists that the true target of his ire was the bureaucracy in City Hall and the State House. He has watched helplessly as the inquiry he helped kick off ensnared two Roxbury lawmakers, then stalled.
He pulls no punches in his assessment of why two black pols went down alone. “The key players in this are not Chuck Turner and Dianne Wilkerson,’’ he declared yesterday. “They are not the power brokers. African-Americans need to stand up and see what’s going on. We’re being bamboozled.’’
This incident is obviously a black eye for the Menino administration.But this is also bad news for public faith in government. Critics will insist that Kineavy’s conduct could only be the product of paranoia, or worse. When the second-most influential person in City Hall purports to get three e-mails a month, the critics are impossible to dismiss as crazy.
Wilburn hopes this will give new impetus to his pleas for a fuller investigation of the licensing process in City Hall, which he believes was thwarted. He was privy to much of the investigation, and he believes more people should go down.
“In terms of contact with the mayor, it was all [through] Kineavy,’’ he said. “I don’t believe there were no e-mails.’’
