[Make sure to checkout the link behind the image above for the back story here]

Phil Jones of CRU is one cocky SOB. He freely admits to avoiding FOIA request by deleting emails in at least one email just released in Climategate II. In email <0021>, which is a response from one Manola Brunet to something Jones sent previously, we have this Jones statement at the end:

Hola Manola,
I’ve saved emails at CRU and then deleted them from the server. Now I’m at home I just have some hard copies.

Dated Sept 12, 2009 this emails is unambiguous evidence (and admission) that Jones deleted emails in response to FOIA actions. A crime, clear and simple.

Then there is this bold admission in <0344>

The inadvertent email I sent last month has led to a Data Protection Act request sent by  a certain Canadian, saying  that the email maligned his scientific credibility with his peers! If he pays 10 pounds (which he hasn’t yet) I am supposed to go through my emails  and he can get anything I’ve written about him. About 2 months ago I deleted loads of emails, so have very little – if anything at all.

Update: Willis Eschenbach at WUWT has more background and a good statement of what this means – in the case of one Phil Jones:

[Phil Jones:] I do not want to make the raw data available, as it will involve more and more requests. We make the gridded data available and that should be enough.

In is own words, Jones schemes to flaunt the code of ethics and the law. Jones’ as ego issues, as Mr. Eschenbach notes:

My conclusion after all this time is that Phil truly didn’t get it. He actually didn’t understand. He was not the owner of private data. He was the curator of public data. He didn’t understand that FOI requests are legal documents. Throughout the whole episode he treated them as some kind of optional request to grant or not as he saw fit.

There is a part of me that believes this resistance was part ego, part realization down deep their methods and processes  were unprofessionally poor (face it, their code and results are crap as noted in the post and in numerous posts from two years ago and the original release).

Hard to believe this much angst was generated from this much shoddy work.