Late last week, the Blunt administration was apparently in a serious lather to start the vicious smear job against whistleblower Scott Eckersley.  So much so that they had Rich Aubuchon --the general counsel for the Blunt Office of Administration-- send a nasty letter that included demonstrable lies to the editorial page editor of the Springfield News-Leader, Tony Messenger.

Kindly, Messenger made that letter available to the public [1].  It includes this segment (emphasis added):

On Friday, September 28, 2007, Martin and Pryor met with Eckersley to discuss his departure. [...]  He spoke about his role in the General Counsel's office and asserted for the first time his views about the policy of record retention.

As other portions of Aubuchon's letter makes clear, he had by that time made an exhaustive search through all Eckersley's emails and would therefore have been fully aware of the emails sent before September 28 from Eckersley to others in the governor's office stating his views about the violation of the record retention policy. 

Who else thinks that an attorney like Rich Aubuchon --particularly one who has risen to such a prominent position in state government as general counsel to the Office of Administration-- was taking some pretty foolish risks by lying to an editor of the Governor's hometown paper, of all people?  Given Aubuchon's willingness to sacrifice truth and principle for political allies, it isn't hard to see why he remains in the employ of the Blunt administration while a truth-teller like Scott Eckersley was pushed out the door. 

If nothing else, it's now clear why Aubuchon and not someone from the Governor's office sent the letter.  Blunt and Martin already knew they were in big enough trouble and outsourced the selling of their fabrications to someone outside the Governor's office.  Once the lies get to snowballing downhill, it becomes awfully hard to stop them...