A nonprofit government watchdog is suing the Department of State seeking to force the agency to disclose email and text message records of its communications with environmental activist groups like the Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council and World Wildlife Fund.
The suit follows two Freedom of Information Act requests for the documents concerning the Obama administration’s pledge with China last November to curb greenhouse gas emissions in the two nations and the upcoming United Nations summit later this year in Paris seeking a new Kyoto Protocol on global warming.
Officials with the Energy & Environment Legal Institute believe the documents will provide Congress, the news media and the public with important information about the State Department’s involvement with international environmental special interest groups.
“However, despite statutory requirements regarding the release of information … State has offered no indication it is actually processing either of them, forcing the suit,” the institute said in a statement about the litigation.
“We believe the documents contain evidence that the Clinton administration actively participated in orchestrating the supposed scientific, in truth merely rhetorical proclamations underpinning the original Kyoto treaty that the Paris agreement builds upon,” said Christopher Horner, a senior fellow with the institute. “Specifically, it is our understanding that the document in question is a smoking gun, urging the [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] to downplay a key scientific uncertainty expressly because it was causing problems.”
“The Senate and the public need to see the correspondence we seek in the suit well before the administration purports to commit the United States in a ‘politically binding’ pact, vowing to constrain our ability to use the most reliable energy sources which we have in abundance,” Horner told the Washington Examiner.
Horner first exposed former Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson’s illegal use of a fake email account name — “Richard Windsor” — as well as that agency’s manipulation of the FOIA process to obstruct Right-leaning groups like the institute and facilitate Left-leaning groups like the Sierra Club.
“This administration has a culture of stonewalling, particularly when the documents in question are potentially embarrassing because they illustrate the extent of their war on traditional fuel sources, as well as the cozy relationships that exist between government employees and environmentalist pressure groups,” he said.
Horner also said the Obama administration has an “ideologically aligned agenda” and has improper and “collusive relationships” with special interest groups. Since the president will likely sign an agreement in Paris without Senate approval, other methods of transparency are needed, he said.
“They’re stepping above the required treaty process. We’re going to try to find out whatever we can since they’re trying to circumvent the Senate’s advice,” Horner said.
A government agency has 20 working days to produce requested documents that don’t fall under nine exemptions permitted by the FOIA. The State Department acknowledged receipt of the institute’s two requests; it has said nothing about what records it will release, if any.
The institute’s first FOIA request, filed on Jan. 28, requested emails and text messages sent to or from five senior State Department officials and the World Wildlife Fund, Natural Resources Defense Council, Greenpeace and the Sierra Club. It also requested texts and emails from the same officials regarding the environmental pledge with China and the agreement planned for adoption in Paris.
“The public has no up-to-date information about how the State Department is carrying out its work or how the department is handling comments from the public and outside groups demanding aggressive action against climate change,” the request said.
The second institute FOIA request, filed on Feb. 2, sought all documents sent to and from Day Mount, a State Department official in the Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs, to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Working Group on Nov. 15, 1995. E&E Legal suspects that a document within those records contains imperative information.
A State Department spokesman declined to comment for this story.
