Posted: 7:42 pm EST
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Last fall, Ray Maxwell alleged that there was a Foggy Bottom operation to “separate” damaging State Department documents before they were turned over to the Accountability Review Board investigating security lapses surrounding the Sept. 11, 2012, terrorist attacks on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya. (see Former State Dept DAS Raymond Maxwell Alleges Benghazi Document Scrub Pre-ARB Investigation).

At that time, the State Department deputy spox, Marie Harf  called the allegations “a crazy conspiracy theory about people squirreling away things in some basement office and keeping them secret.” She also said this:

QUESTION: Did people involved in preparing the documents for the ARB separate documents into stuff that was just whatever and then things that they thought were – made people on the seventh floor, including the Secretary, look bad?

MS. HARF: Not to my knowledge, Matt, at all. The ARB had full and unfettered access and direct access to State Department employees and documents. The ARB’s co-chairs, Ambassador Pickering and Admiral Mullen, have both repeated several times that they had unfettered access to all the information they needed. So the ARB had complete authority to reach out independently and directly to people. Employees had complete authority to reach out directly to the ARB. And they’ve said themselves they had unfettered access, so I have no idea what prompted this somewhat interesting accounting of what someone thinks they may have seen or is now saying they saw.

But the ARB has been clear, the ARB’s co-chairs have been clear that they had unfettered access, and I am saying that they did have full and direct access to State Department employees and documents.

Read more: State Dept on Former DAS Raymond Maxwell’s Allegations: Crazy. Conspiracy Theory. What Else?

The State Department spokesman Alec Gerlach also denied the allegations (see State Department Denies Raymond Maxwell’s Document Scrub Allegations. Peeeeriod!!!!).

“That allegation is totally without merit. It doesn’t remotely reflect the way the ARB actually obtained information,” he said in an email. He explained that an “all-points bulletin”-type request went out department-wide instructing “full and prompt cooperation” for anyone contacted by the ARB, and urging anyone with “relevant information” to contact the board. 

“So individuals with information were reaching out proactively to the Board. And, the ARB was also directly engaged with individuals and the Department’s bureaus and offices to request information and pull on whichever threads it chose to. The range of sources that the ARB’s investigation drew on would have made it impossible for anyone outside of the ARB to control its access to information,” Gerlach said. He further noted that the leaders of the ARB have claimed they had unfettered access to information and people. 

In both cases, these government officials emphasized one thing: that the Pickering-Mullen Accountability Review Board “had full and unfettered access and direct access to State Department employees and documents.”

In the September 2013 congressional hearing, the Benghazi ARB co-chair also told Congress, “We had unfettered access to State Department personnel and documents. There were no limitations.” 

Shouldn’t we now consider the absent clintonemail.com server as one such limitation?

In light of reports that Secretary Clinton exclusively used a personal email account to conduct government business as secretary of state, and that her private emails were never reportedly actual residents of Foggy Bottom, would these current and former government officials now revisit their statements on the ARB’s “unfettered” access to documents?

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