(AP) -- With reports of dangerously faulty gas pedals on Toyota models piling up, an executive for the automaker urged the company in an e-mail last January to "come clean" about the safety problem. Five days later, Toyota issued a massive recall. The Japanese automaker has recalled more than 6 million vehicles in the U.S. and a total of more than 8 million worldwide because of acceleration problems in multiple models and braking issues in the Prius hybrid.

The company e-mails are among 70,000 pages of papers turned over to government investigators. The e-mails show serious concerns within Toyota's public relations leadership that it wasn't dealing with the safety problems squarely.

(Copyright ©2010 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)