If it weren't so serious, it would be a scream.

Here you had a governor of the great state of North Carolina, Mike Easley, conducting state -business via a private, secret e-mail account under the name "Regnad Kcin" - which (we're not making this up) stood for "Nick Danger" spelled backward.

"Nick Danger" was a fictional private eye featured in performances by a 1960s Los Angeles-based comedy troupe called The Firesign Theatre. It is unclear why Easley chose the name - and less clear why he spelled it in reverse. Sherri Johnson, Easley's communications director, said he often wrote backward - something she suggested might have resulted from his learning disability.

That's the funny part, sort of. But several organizations - including the N.C. Press Association, of which The Pilot is a member - are not laughing. They're the ones who filed a lawsuit last spring, accusing the then-governor of "the systematic deletion, destruction or concealment" of electronic communications that are supposed to be available to the public.

Reprehensible Secrecy

Fortunately, Easley's successor, Gov. Bev Perdue, has shown more of an inclination to keep the public's business public. Her attitude of openness makes her predecessor's sneaky and squirrelly approach seem all the more reprehensible by comparison.

The relevations that have touched off the latest round of sensational news stories came in depositions provided by former Easley aides, including Johnson, whom the court had ordered to come forward in response to the suit.

Renee Hoffman, Easley's press secretary, said the governor specified that he wanted e-mail messages to and from his office zapped so they would not become public. According to testimony, he required Communications Director Johnson to tell public -information officers throughout the administration to carry out the secrecy policy - and to do so in secrecy.

"She [Johnson] instructed me to tell them ... to delete their e-mails to and from the governor's office," Hoffman said in her deposition. And she added, in a bit of irony, that they were "not to write about that instruction to their employees in an e-mail."

Story Keeps Getting Shabbier

State law is clear on this matter: All communications that state officials send or receive as part of their duties must be available for public inspection. E-mails fall under that rule. All this evidence now coming out is starting to look like a smoking gun, since sending instructions down the chain of command to purposely circumvent state law is more than an embarrassing lapse of judgment. It's closer to a crime.

And there appears to be another layer of apparent official wrongdoing or complicity. According to the depositions, which sound pretty convincing, key -members of Easley's press staff knew he made -frequent use of his private "Nick Danger" e-mail account as a subterfuge to avoid public scrutiny. Yet they did nothing to make sure those messages were released when requested by, among others, The News & Observer of Raleigh.

It is an outrage that the only state employee to lose her job in all this is Debbie Crane, a former public information officer for the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services. Because she complied with the law by responding positively to the media's request to reveal the order to delete e-mails, Easley ordered her fired and called her "dishonest."

At this point, on the contrary, she's looking like one of the few honest ones.