McClatchy columnist Jack Betts, reviewing the recently released depositions of former Easley press officers, offers some fascinating insight into the press machinations of the previous administration.

Short version: Mike Easley appears to be borderline paranoid about his public persona ? nearly ordering the termination of a staffer at Cultural Resources who had the temerity to poke a little fun at an eye-rollingly puffy official bio of Easley.

The real news is at the end of the column, when Betts highlights Easley’s pettiness ? which could get the attention of federal prosecutors:

[The Cultural Resources official] was not fired. Easley’s press aides briefly considered but rejected using her potential firing as an example to remind other public information officers to use the phone, not e-mails, on matters involving the governor.

In 2008, Easley thought PIO Debbie Crane had talked former Cabinet secretary Carmen Hooker Odom out of a newspaper interview he wanted her to grant about a botched mental health reform program. Easley ordered her fired and escorted immediately out of the Department of Health and Human Services.

It backfired. Crane then told reporters that the Easley administration had been advising PIOs to delete e-mails, a violation of the state public records law. Easley’s press office hotly denied it and another staffer called Crane “dishonest, untruthful and insubordinate” ? words, Johnson said in her deposition, that Easley dictated and ordered sent out.

Easley’s legal counsel, Reuben Young, later issued a statement that there was “no evidence” of orders to delete e-mails in violation of state public records law or policy.

Trouble is, another former Easley press secretary, Renee Hoffman, said that such orders were issued ? at least twice. Former Communication Director Cari Boyce and Johnson, she said in her deposition, “instructed the PIOs to delete their e-mail to and from the Governor’s Office.”
And where did that order come from? Hoffman replied, “It’s only an assumption, but we would assume that it came from the Governor if the Governor’s press secretary was giving us that instruction.”

It’s an unbridled leap to conclude that depositions tell the whole truth. But they suggest a question: Who in the Easley administration really was “dishonest, untruthful and insubordinate”?
Debbie Crane? Or Mike Easley?

You be the judge.