By the final year of Hillary Clinton’s stint as secretary of state, dozens of senior State Department officials were aware Clinton used a personal email account to conduct official business.
However, Cheryl Mills, Clinton’s then-chief of staff, oversaw the suppression of a Freedom of Information Act request that sought information about Clinton’s private email accounts while Clinton was still in office.
The findings came in an inspector general report made public Thursday that blasted the agency for its sloppy handling of FOIA requests made to the secretary of state’s office, from the time of Madeleine Albright to John Kerry.
After a watchdog group called Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed a FOIA request in Dec. 2012 for documents “sufficient to show the number of email accounts of, or associated with, Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton,” Mills was informed of the request and tapped her staff to respond.
“[I]t does not appear that [the secretary’s office] searched any email records, even though the request clearly encompassed emails,” the inspector general wrote.
“At the time the request was received, dozens of senior officials throughout the department, including members of Secretary Clinton’s immediate staff, exchanged emails with the secretary using the personal accounts she used to conduct official business,” the watchdog added.
The report Thursday gives the first glimpse into the extent of State Department staff’s knowledge that Clinton used a personal email network to shield her communications from the public.
State’s inspector general began the extensive probe in April of last year, roughly one month after news of Clinton’s private email use sparked controversy. The watchdog plans to release an additional report on the use of personal email to conduct official business, noting Thursday’s report was just one in a series on the issue.
The findings were made public the same day the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee held a hearing on agencies’ sluggish responses to document requests. Federal officials routinely slow-walk such requests to blunt congressional investigations or watchdog probes that could otherwise unearth unflattering details.
A third of all State Department staff assigned to respond to FOIA requests are tied up in the Clinton email case, leaving hundreds of other open records requests to gather dust, the inspector general found.
The watchdog discovered State Department officials had in many cases told reporters, transparency groups and individuals who had asked for documents that the records they sought did not exist when, in fact, the officials simply hadn’t looked for the records.
What’s more, the inspector general highlighted a provision of FOIA that explains why agency staff have relied exclusively on the emails Clinton provided to the government rather than look for the messages she withheld.
“FOIA neither authorizes nor requires agencies to search for federal records in personal email accounts maintained on private servers or through commercial providers (for example, Gmail, Yahoo, and Hotmail),” the report said.
In other words, the State Department has ignored pressure to search the emails recovered off Clinton’s private server by the FBI because the same law driving the release of the emails to the public also prevents the agency from looking at anything Clinton didn’t personally hand over.
“[U]nder current law and department policy, employees who use personal email to conduct official business are required to forward or copy email from a personal account to their respective department accounts within 20 days,” the report said.
Clinton did not turn over her official emails until nearly two years after she had left the agency. She reportedly did so under pressure from the State Department, not voluntarily, as she has claimed.
The watchdog found State Department officials “rarely meet requirements for timeliness” when it comes to answering FOIA requests, and that officials often don’t complete thorough searches for requested documents.
State Department officials only searched agency email accounts for relevant records if a FOIA request specifically mentioned emails, even though they were required to do so by law if the requested records were likely to reside in an official’s inbox.
“In addition, although FOIA requires agencies to respond to requests within 20 working days, some requests involving the Office of the Secretary have taken more than 500 days to process,” the report said, noting the agency often falls behind schedule “even for simple requests.”
The secretary’s office was “particularly late” in answering FOIA requests, and the slowest responses came during Clinton’s tenure.
For example, Clinton’s office processed just three FOIA requests within the 20-day limit during her entire time as secretary of state.
Agency officials told the inspector general they had encountered “instances in which [the secretary’s office] reported that records did not exist, even though it was later revealed that such records did exist.”
The enormous burden of processing 55,000 pages of Clinton’s emails for release by Jan. 29 has diverted staff from other FOIA responsibilities, the inspector general found.
Although the agency has promised to hire more staff to cover the gaps, “little progress has been made to date to resolve the personnel shortage,” the inspector general said.
In fact, the State Department has brought on just seven temporary employees to handle the crush of new FOIA requests related to Clinton’s diplomatic tenure.
But the system of responding to FOIA requests was broken long before the private email scandal emerged. The inspector general highlighted as an example a FOIA request filed by the Associated Press in March 2010 that sought copies of Clinton’s public and private schedules.
After the secretary’s office responded with records that had nothing to do with Clinton’s calendar, then refused to respond to any additional correspondence on the matter, the Associated Press refiled its request in Aug. 2013. The secretary’s office strung FOIA officials along with tidbits of information about where the calendars might be until the Associated Press finally sued the agency in March 2015.
It was only after the State Department began spending taxpayer money to fight the FOIA lawsuit that the agency actually looked for the records, at which point it found 4,440 responsive documents.
