“I don’t remember anybody buying their hard drives. I don’t remember anybody buying anything,’’ said Stephen P. Crosby, who worked for Romney’s two predecessors and handled the transition between Jane Swift’s outgoing administration and Romney’s incoming one, and who was also co-chairman of Governor Deval Patrick’s budget and finance transition team. “I can’t even remember anybody discussing it. It certainly wasn’t [standard operating procedure] in any way. That’s almost unthinkable. It seems inherently a bad idea. You almost think you’d want to have a record of everything going on for the public.’’

The aides from the administrations of William F. Weld, Paul Cellucci, and Jane Swift all said they were not aware of such purchases being made previously.

Top aides to the three Massachusetts governors who preceded Mitt Romney - all of them Republicans - said yesterday they know of no instance when state employees purchased their computer hard drive as they left the administration, as 11 of Romney’s aides did in 2006 as he was laying the groundwork for his first presidential campaign.

Terry Dolan, who worked in six administrations and handled office transfers for many of them, said it was rare for departing employees to purchase state property - and unheard of for them to purchase computer equipment.


“That had not happened prior to the end of the Romney administration,’’ said Dolan, who worked as director of administration in the governor’s office from 1985 to 2008. But Dolan said Romney’s staff was “careful and methodical’’ and “so we acceded to that request’’ for the purchase of hard drives. “I can’t conceive that they would have done anything that was illegal,’’ she said.

The Globe reported yesterday that 11 of Romney’s aides purchased their state-issued hard drives and wiped e-mails from the server at the end of Romney’s term in 2006. As a result, according to Patrick’s legal counsel, no records have been found of any e-mails sent during Romney’s four-year term. A spokeswoman for Romney’s campaign for the Republican presidential nomination acknowledged that the hard drives were purchased but said that the former aides did nothing wrong and had “complied with the law and longtime executive branch practice.’’


The Romney campaign yesterday declined requests to explain why the hard drives were purchased, leaving it unclear whether they were trying to keep information confidential. Nor did the campaign respond to questions about whether Romney had used a computer that contained one of the purchased hard drives. His former special assistant, Natalie Crate, purchased three hard drives but it is unclear whose she purchased. Crate did not return messages seeking comment.

The Romney campaign yesterday responded to the disclosure by filing a request under the state’s public records law for information about contacts between the office of Patrick, a Democrat, and the campaign of President Obama. Matt Rhoades, Romney’s campaign manager, wrote to the Patrick administration yesterday that “Under state law, a public employee may not provide services to a candidate or campaign during his or her work hours . . . It is evident that your office has become an opposition research arm of the Obama reelection campaign.’’

Patrick’s chief legal counsel, Mark Reilly, said the administration would meet the request. “We have fulfilled over 250 public records requests in our five years in office, and we will be happy to fulfill this one,’’ he said in a statement.


In addition to the purchase by 11 aides of 17 hard drives at $65 each before Romney left office, Romney administration officials also wiped clean computers and servers that contained electronic copies of emails in the governor’s office.

Dolan, who was part of several administrations, said it was common practice to scrub the computer servers, and the computers themselves, as administrations switched staffs - and also, in some instances, when new Cabinet members joined the administration.

But it was a first, she said, when Romney was preparing to leave office and aides began looking into buying their entire computers, which would have cost about $1,100 apiece, before settling on just buying a $65 hard drive.

“When it came right down to it, people weren’t interested in the box, the monitor, the keyboard, the entire PC,’’ Dolan said. “It was just the hard drive.’’

As a result, she said, the hard drives were removed, and new ones were inserted and left inside the old computer equipment, ready for the Patrick administration to use.

Dolan and others also noted that a 1997 Supreme Judicial Court decision states that “the governor is not explicitly included’’ in the Public Records Law.

But Secretary of State William F. Galvin, who oversees public records, said that while governor’s aides do not have to release e-mails to the public, they do have to preserve them for the state archives.

Jeffrey J. Pyle, a Boston lawyer who specializes in public records cases, said, “It squarely appears that it is the policy of the Commonwealth that electronic records maintained by Constitutional officers are public property, whether they are subject to disclosure or not.’’ He also said the hard drives “should not have been sold as private property.’’


Kimberly Haberlin, a Patrick spokeswoman, said no departing members of the current administration purchased computer hard drives.

Starting in September 2006, the Romney administration began submitting applications to the Records Conservation Board to have documents moved to the state archives. They covered a wide range of topics, including gubernatorial correspondence, daily schedule files, photographs, briefing packets, and speeches.

At the same time, the board granted a request to destroy some documents, including routine items - such as vendor invoices, intern files, and accounting records - and those involving topics such as “travel expense records,’’ “pardon/commutation records,’’ and “individual appointment requests.’’

The applications do not specifically mention e-mails, and it is unclear whether Romney aides printed out e-mails and included them in the boxes that were sent to the state archives.

Romney’s chief legal counsel during part of his administration, Mark Nielsen, said Romney’s actions were legal, telling the Globe earlier this week that “The longstanding practice in the governor’s office was to give employees the option to buy old equipment when they were leaving office, and certain employees, including me, did that.’’ Romney’s counsel at the time he was preparing to leave office, Brian J. Leske, did not return a message yesterday.


But officials in prior administrations said they were not familiar with such purchases as a long-standing practice. Peter Forman, who was Cellucci’s deputy director of finance and chief of staff to Swift, said he had not heard of administration officials buying their hard drives.

“Nobody offered it to me any more than they offered any other furniture,’’ Forman said. “Why would you want to buy your computer? It’s an old computer, it’s a used computer. I certainly didn’t do it. And I’m not sure why anyone would, if it’s all centrally backed up.’’

Meanwhile, Romney’s campaign yesterday morning issued a memo to reporters. Titled “Obsessed with Secrecy,’’ it accused the Obama administration of having “turned its back on his campaign promises of openness and transparency.’’

The Democratic National Committee filed a request last night for all the e-mails involving the 11 aides who later purchased their hard drives.

Matt Viser can be reached at maviser@globe.com. Michael Levenson can be reached at mlevenson@globe.com.