JMHO WARNING:
This e-mail activity for me is consistent with the way we have seen Kaine behave & approach this problem - as a person on a working team with LE. IMO, Kaine has revealed that he prefers to keep control of his projects and maintain that control by communicating both up the organization, down the organization, and across the organization to keep critical people informed on what he considers a need-to-know basis.
The e-mail's value to me was having a peek at Kaine's penchant for carefully measured words, his direct, factual, but sparsely detailed statements, his confident, almost authoritative writing style, and his working culture. Kaine doesn't use qualifiers. Things are black and white. Kaine does not see the need to support his factual statements. He withholds useful details. He's a need-to-know communicator. He protects information. Doesn't panic. Somewhat detached team player, IMO. LE probably loves the guy.
To me he comes across as well-intentioned but frequently socially awkward.
I see an non-creative type engineer who has of fear of being criticized or challenged. (Thus the with-holding of details.) There may be self-esteem problems here - but it's mostly personality style. Needs to be right. Needs control - probably so no one else will mess things up.
This is not to say Kaine is a bad guy. Everyone has their own personality style. Kaine's is just very visible and untempered due to a relatively low EQ.
The guy just doesn't bother me that much - I know lots of folks like this. Perfectly good folks who never have a clue when a loved one is suffering - until after the fact. At which point, they apply logic and sincerely try to analyze and mathematically solve what is an emotional problem.
((((hugs to all engineer-types, Kaine included))))
JMHO