According to a report by the Associated Press, there's an Obama secret email service for some of his political appointees, because, otherwise they'd be inundated with unwanted messages.

But the real intrigued came about once the Associated Press started making inquiries into the secretive email addresses of political appointments by the Obama administration. 

The AP first started making overtures for the email addresses after last year's disclosures by the former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), that they had used separate email addresses while at work. 

The real issues occur when those federal agencies are told to hand over internal communiqués for congressional inquiries. If they're using a separate email service than the one assigned when they become stewards of the state, they can claim they're not work-related. 

More than three months ago, according to the Associated Press, they sought the separate EPA email addresses under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). 

The Labor Department initially asked the AP to pay $1 million for the email addresses. 

It's important to note that the requests for email addresses is different from the personal, non-governmental email addresses government employees use at work. 

That happens, though it's highly discouraged and there are laws requiring that most federal records be preserved, so personal emails used for government business would be forbidden, obviously. 

The secret email accounts also help drive a wedge in the public's trust for their federal employees. 

"What happens when that person doesn't work there anymore? He leaves and someone makes a request (to review emails) in two years," said Kel McClanahan, executive director of National Security Counselors, an open government group. "Who's going to know to search the other accounts? You would hope that agencies doing this would keep a list of aliases in a desk drawer, but you know that isn't happening."

The AP has identified agencies participating in the secret addresses, including the aforementioned Labor Department and the Department of Health and Human Services.

But there are others who haven't turned over the secretive email addresses to the AP: the Environmental Protection Agency; the Pentagon; and the departments of Veterans Affairs, Transportation, Treasury, Justice, Housing and Urban Development, Homeland Security, Commerce and Agriculture.

The White House also declined to comment on the missing email accounts. 

One such person of note who uses an Obama secret email addres, is HHS Secretary, Kathleen Sebelius.  The HHS initially balked at the idea of handing them over, but then included Sebelius' secret email address and requested the AP not publish that address because it's used internally to perform the functions of her job. 

"We're talking about an email address, and an email address given to an individual by the government to conduct official business is not private," said Aaron Mackey, a FOIA attorney with the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. 

Citizens and foreigners may use FOIA to compel the government to turn over copies of the federal records for zero or little cost. Anyone who seeks information through the law is generally supposed to get it unless disclosure would hurt national security, violate personal privacy or expose proprietary business secrets. 

The AP concluded their piece today by quoting Obama in a ploy to cast the Obama secret emails as hypocritical: 

"Obama pledged during his first week in office to make government more transparent and open. The nation's signature open-records law, he said in a memo to his Cabinet, would be 'administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails.'"