State Department Office Removed Benghazi Files After Congressional Subpoena
Release of records delayed over a year due to removal
Hillary Clinton / AP
State Department
officials removed files from the secretary’s office related to the
Benghazi attack in Libya and transferred them to another department
after receiving a congressional subpoena last spring, delaying the
release of the records to Congress for over a year.
Attorneys
for the State Department said the electronic folders, which contain
hundreds of documents related to the Benghazi attack and Libya, were
belatedly rediscovered at the end of last year.
They said the files had been overlooked by State Department officials because the executive
secretary’s office transferred them to another department and flagged
them for archiving last April, shortly after receiving a subpoena from
the House Select Committee on Benghazi.
The
new source of documents includes electronic folders used by senior
officials under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. They were originally
kept in the executive secretary’s office, which handles communication
and coordination between the secretary of state’s office and other
department bureaus.
The House Benghazi Committee requested documents from the secretary’s office in a subpoena filed in March 2015.
Congressional
investigators met with the head of the executive secretary’s office
staff to discuss its records maintenance system and the scope of the
subpoena last April. That same month, State Department officials sent
the electronic folders to another bureau for archiving, and they were
not searched in response to the request.
The
blunder could raise new questions about the State Department’s records
process, which has come under scrutiny from members of Congress and
government watchdogs.
Sen.
Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee,
blasted the State Department’s Freedom of Information Act process as
“broken” in January, citing “systematic failures at the agency.”
The
inspector general for the State Department also released a report
criticizing the agency’s public records process in January. The report
highlighted failures in the executive secretary’s office, which responds
to records requests for the Office of the Secretary.
Since
last fall, the State Department has taken additional steps to increase
transparency, recently hiring a transparency coordinator.
But the late discovery of the electronic folders has set back the release of information in a number of public records lawsuits filed against the State Department by watchdog groups.
The
State Department first disclosed that staffers had discovered the
unsearched folders in a January court filing. Attorneys for the
department asked the court for additional time to process and release
the documents in response to a 2014 lawsuit filed by the government
ethics group Judicial Watch.
Around
the same time, the State Department alerted the House Select Committee
on Benghazi to the discovery. On April 8, the department turned over
1,100 pages of documents from the electronic folders to the House
Benghazi Committee, over a year after the committee’s subpoena.
The
delay has had consequences. The Benghazi Committee had already
completed the majority of its interviews with diplomats and government
officials regarding the Benghazi attack before it received the latest
tranche of documents.
Rep.
Trey Gowdy (R., S.C.), chairman of the Benghazi Committee, said in an
April 8 statement it was “deplorable that it took over a year for these
records to be produced to our committee.”
“This
investigation is about a terrorist attack that killed four Americans,
and it could have been completed a lot sooner if the administration had
not delayed and delayed and delayed at every turn,” Gowdy said.
The
decision by State Department officials to transfer the electronic
folders to another bureau after receiving the subpoena could also raise
questions.
The
subpoena requested Benghazi-related documents and communications from
10 of Hillary Clinton’s top aides for the years 2011 and 2012.
The
requests included standard language that “Subpoenaed records,
documents, data or information should not be destroyed, modified,
removed, transferred or otherwise made inaccessible to the Committee.”
The
State Department’s attorneys said the executive secretary’s office
transferred the folders to the Office of Information Programs and
Services for “retiring” in April 2015. Public records officials did not
realize for almost eight months that the folders had been moved, and so
they were not searched in response to FOIA requests or subpoenas.
“In
April 2015—prior to its search in this [Judicial Watch] case—the
Secretariat Staff within the Office of the Executive Secretariat
(“S/ES-S”) retired the shared office folders and transferred them to the
custody of the Bureau of Administration, Office of Information Programs
and Services,” the State Department said in a Feb. 5 court filing.
“The
IPS employees working on this FOIA request did not initially identify
S/ES retired records as a location to search for potentially responsive
records because they were operating with the understanding that, to the
extent responsive records from the Office of the Secretary existed, they
resided within [the executive secretary’s office].”
According
to congressional sources, officials on the House Benghazi Committee had
a meeting with the executive secretary’s office to discuss the subpoena
and the locations of potentially relevant records on April 10, 2015.
Electronic folders of senior staff members were discussed during the
briefing.
State
Department officials at the meeting included the director of the
executive secretary’s office staff, who was responsible for handling the
office’s records maintenance, the assistant secretary for legislative
affairs, and Catherine Duval, the attorney who oversaw the public release of Hillary Clinton’s official emails. The officials gave no indication that electronic folders had recently been transferred out of the office.
The State Department declined to comment on whether the folders were transferred after the meeting took place.
A State Department official told the Washington Free Beacon that
personnel did not mislead congressional investigators, and added that
no officials at the meeting were involved in transferring the folders.
“The
Department personnel who briefed the Select Committee in April 2015 did
not play a role in the transfer of these files to State’s Bureau of
Administration,” the State Department official said.
The official added that department files are often moved as a routine matter.
“Files
that are generated in an office are regularly moved to the Bureau of
Administration for storage according to published records retirement
schedules,” the official said. “This is a routine action that would not
involve a senior supervisor. It also continues to make them available to
respond to either Congressional or FOIA requests.”
Duval left the State Department last September. She had previously overseen document production for the IRS during the targeting controversy.
Republicans had criticized that process after agency emails were reportedly destroyed and a key IRS official’s hard drive was shredded months after they had been subpoenaed by Congress.
In recent months, the State Department has been working to increase transparency.
“The
Department has worked closely with the Select Committee in a spirit of
cooperation and responsiveness,” a State Department official said.
“Since the Committee was formed, we have provided 48 witnesses for
interviews and more than 95,000 pages of documents.”
The efforts drew some praise from the House Benghazi Committee last fall.
“It’s
curious the Department is suddenly able to be more productive after
recent staff changes involving those responsible for document
production,” committee spokesman Jamal Ware said in a Sept. 25, 2015
press release.
Still,
it could be months before the public is able to see many of the
Benghazi-related documents belatedly discovered by the State Department.
The House Benghazi Committee is still completing its investigation and
has not released them.
The
department’s attorneys have also been granted extensions to produce the
documents in response to several public records lawsuits.
In
one FOIA case, first filed by the watchdog group Citizens United in
2014, a judge has given the State Department until next August to turn
over the new materials.
Correction: The
original version of this article stated that the House Select Committee
on Benghazi had submitted two subpoenas to the State Department. The
Committee only submitted one subpoena, on March 4, 2015. The November
2014 request was an official letter from the Committee to Secretary John
Kerry.
Frank p.
Moral courage is the most valuable and
usually the most absent characteristic in men
GEORGE S. PATTON
GEORGE S. PATTON
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