Top officials with the National Archives and Records Administration were concerned that Hillary Clinton might attempt to take her State Department records with her to the Clinton Library in Arkansas while she was still in office, internal emails show.
Paul Wester, the archives’ chief records officer, said in December 2012 that he and other agency officials needed to “discuss what we know” about the State Department’s handling of Clinton records and map out a way to “delicately go about learning more,” according to documents obtained by the nonpartisan watchdog group Cause of Action and made public Thursday.
Wester wrote that a colleague said the director of the Clinton Library had indicated “there are or may be plans afoot for taking her records from State to Little Rock.”
The National Archives and Records Administration was busy at the time ensuring “everyone leaving the administration does not leave with federal records.”
Wester said fellow archives officials had raised “the specter of the Kissinger experience vis-a-vis Hillary Clinton,” referring to a protracted legal battle over the Nixon-era secretary of state’s records.
Emails between archives officials and a staff member of the House Select Committee on Benghazi reveal congressional investigators had concerns with the State Department’s handling of agency records.
The State Department won an award from the National Archives for its handling of official communications in 2010.
“The Department of State now devotes extensive resources to managing and reviewing the 28 million electronic cables sent by the secretary of state, American ambassadors in foreign countries and other employees of the department,” the National Archives said of the agency. “In 2009, the Department of State transferred over 350,000 of these electronic telegrams to the National Archives.”
But the National Archives’ emails, as well as a barrage of more recent reporting, suggest that trend may have tapered off after Clinton assumed office in 2009.
Clinton relied on at least two private email addresses, hosted on a private server, for her official communications at the State Department, and only turned records over to the agency when prompted by officials years after her departure.
“These records reveal that before Hillary Clinton exited the State Department, there were serious concerns about her violating federal records laws,” Dan Epstein, Cause of Action’s president, said of the national archives emails. “Yet, despite knowledge by the State Department and the archives, nothing was done about it.”
