THE office computer of suspended Power Authority Inspector General Daniel Wiese was “wiped totally clean” of e-mails and other records just days before being seized by investigators probing an alleged State Police dirty-tricks squad, The Post has learned.
The computer, believed to contain sensitive details of Wiese’s communications with State Police officials, was grabbed last month at the Power Authority’s headquarters in White Plains under a subpoena issued by the office of Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, a source close to the authority said.
“The hard drive had been wiped totally clean just a day or two before investigators got to it,” the source said.
“Given the way it was scrubbed, it does not appear that the attorney general’s investigators can recover the information that was there.”
Investigators also found Wiese’s computer had been equipped with a rare and sophisticated “destroyer program” that automatically wiped out files and e-mails stored for more than 60 days.
The use of a destroyer program may have violated a state law requiring the retention of official records, a second authority source said.
Wiese, a former State Police colonel and longtime associate of former Govs. George Pataki and Eliot Spitzer, was the power behind State Police operations in New York City, Westchester and Long Island for more than a decade.
He was linked last summer to the Dirty Tricks Scandal involving Spitzer’s efforts to gather purportedly damaging information on Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno (R-Rensselaer), and was accused by former Rep. John Sweeney (R-Saratoga), a Pataki political rival, of involvement in the leak of an embarrassing State Police report on a domestic dispute that may have cost him re-election in 2006.
Gov. Paterson, who directed Cuomo to conduct a criminal probe of the State Police five weeks ago, said Friday that fears that a renegade State Police unit was circulating damaging information on him led him to disclose past marital infidelities and youthful drug use just after taking office in March.
Cuomo’s office refused to comment on the status of Wiese’s computer. Wiese, who was suspended with pay early last month, could not be reached for comment.
The Post disclosed last week that Cuomo’s subpoena-armed investigators had seized the office computer of Laura Demichele, a Power Authority travel officer and longtime Wiese friend.
Two weeks ago, The Post disclosed that Cuomo was probing allegations that Wiese used a Power Authority security contract to dig up dirt on Spitzer’s and Pataki’s political foes.