Fired lawyer says he offered to keep quiet

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- A lawyer who claims Gov. Matt Blunt fired him for disagreeing with the office's e-mail deletion practices said Wednesday that he would have kept quiet if Blunt's friends had helped him find another job.

Scott Eckersley was fired in late September for what Blunt's administration is now describing as poor job performance and misuse of state resources.

But neither Blunt's office nor Eckersley had said anything publicly about his firing until this past weekend.

That's when Eckersley went public with allegations that he was fired after advising Blunt officials -- orally, in a written memo and in e-mails -- that the governor's office wasn't complying with its own policy about retaining e-mails as public records.

At the same time, Blunt's administration released a stack of documents to the media intending to show Eckersley had done private work on state time and had received e-mails from a sexually oriented Internet site.

Eckersley said he had remained silent for a month after his firing because a private attorney working on his behalf had attempted to negotiate a deal with Blunt's administration. Under the proposed arrangement, Eckersley said he would have remained silent and not pursued a lawsuit if he would have received a letter of recommendation and a job, preferably with Mitt Romney's presidential campaign.

"I just wanted a positive reference from the governor, and hopefully a place to go," Eckersley said Wednesday.

"What I kind of was expecting was for the governor to call me and say, 'Scott, your work looks good here, we'll take a look at it, I'm sorry this has happened, all the best, I'll give you a recommendation, let me know where to send it,"' Eckersley said.

Had Blunt's administration granted his request, "that would have taken care of it," Eckersley said. Instead, he has been airing his complaints publicly and pursuing a potential wrongful termination lawsuit.

Eckersley insists he did not issue Blunt's administration an ultimatum.

But Republican Party Executive Director Jarad Craighead claims Eckersley attempted to extort a job in exchange for his silence.