Slowly but surely, we’re gathering more information about the 650,000 emails that the league persistently refuses to release. And some of the information makes the reasons for keeping the emails secret even more obvious.
Per a source with knowledge of the contents of the trove of emails sent to and received by former Washington president Bruce Allen, he sent a questionable photo to multiple members of the league office. The photo depicted two scantily clad women. One was bent over, and the other one was giving her a shot in the buttocks with a fake needle. Allen wrote, “For our next meeting on HGH” or words to that effect.
The NFL confirmed that the email was sent, but the league points out it was sent in 2011. The league also confirmed that recipients included Dennis Curran, Senior Vice-President and General Counsel for the NFL Management Council, and Adolpho Birch, the NFL’s former Senior Vice President of Labor Policy & League Affairs. Neither responded to the email, according to the NFL.
The fact that they didn’t respond cuts both ways. On one hand, they didn’t engage in any discourse on the matter. On the other hand, they didn’t express disapproval or instruct Allen not to send similar emails in the future, at least not via email. (To be fair, it’s possible that he was called, for example, and told to not do that. We don’t know whether that did or didn’t happen.)
This is just another reason why all 650,000 emails need to be seen. And why the NFL, frankly, doesn’t want them all to be revealed.