Kathleen Kane

Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane initially fought the release of the names of Pennsylvania officials who sent or received porn via the state email system.

(AP file photo)

At least eight prominent Pennsylvania officials — including the current head of the state police, Pennsylvania's top environmental regulator, and a former spokesman for Gov. Tom Corbett — were among the commonwealth employees who sent or received hundreds of sexually explicit photos, videos and messages from state email accounts between 2008 and 2012, according to documents made available Thursday by the state Attorney General's Office.



Following a court battle and public record requests from The Inquirer and other news organizations, Attorney General Kathleen Kane's office released the names of the eight recipients and showed reporters some of the pornographic material that it said traveled over state-owned computers during work hours.



The recipients include Frank Noonan, the current state police commissioner; E. Christopher Abruzzo, secretary of the Department of Environmental Protection, and Kevin Harley, who had been Corbett's top spokesman both when Corbett was attorney general and after he became governor.



None could immediately be reached for comment.



Jay Pagni, Corbett's spokesman, said only: "The images described in these news accounts are unacceptable and have no place in the work environment. It is (the governor's) expectation of those who work for him that they perform with the utmost professionalism and are guided by high ethical standards beyond reproach."



Pagni could not say whether Corbett had spoken to Noonan or Abruzzo — cabinet members he appointed — or what, if any, action he would take against them.



The emails include explicit photos and videos of women and men engaged in oral sex, anal sex and intercourse. The videos had titles such as "Cigar," "Chin strap," "Golf Ball washer," "Nascar victory" and "Rocking Horse."



The photographs included naked women and motivational posters with slogans such as "Devotion" and "Willingness" that depicted women performing sexual acts on their male bosses.



Kane's office showed only what it called a sampling of the emails and their contents; it could not say specifically if the messages were opened or forwarded, provide the exact dates and times they were sent, or determine if the pornography had been viewed by the intended recipients.



The office also could not say how many people received the emails or how often the emails circulated. They did say that they emails were usually exchanged between a core group of people who worked in the office.



Kane's office did not show reporters the images of actual emails — just the attached image or the video, which it then attributed to a specific person. Only two of the roughly 80 videos and images that Kane released were sent by the eight former employees named.



It is not known who actually sent those emails.



In a statement explaining her decision to release the names, the office said: "Attorney General Kane believes it is in the public's best interest to have a good understanding of how its public servants conduct their business. She also believes transparency on this issue is a very good way to ensure that the exchanging of sexually explicit material through internal emails on state-owned equipment during official work hours doesn't happen elsewhere."



The exchange of several sexually explicit emails — several hundred over that four-year span — is believed to involve many more state employees, including top state jurists and 30 current employees of the state Attorney General's Office. Kane's office said it was precluded from releasing names of current employees under union agreements.



The recipients named by Kane, a Democrat, had worked in the office under her Republican predecessors. Their emails had been retrieved during Kane's internal review of how her predecessors handled the investigation of serial pedophile Jerry Sandusky.

Other names on the list of porn mail recipients Thursday include former ranking state prosecutors Patrick Blessington, who now works with the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office; Glen Parno, former chief of the environmental section of the Attorney General's Office; Chris Carusone, who played a key role in corruption prosecutions of state legislators and was Corbett's former liaison to the legislature; Richard A. Sheetz, former executive deputy attorney general; and retired agent Randy Feathers.