Posted: 3:10 am EDT
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Via foia.state.gov from Leopold v. State Department FOIA litigation:
Apparently there was some grumbling about the accessibility of the secretary of state to the career diplomats several months into HRC’s tenure. Al Kamen reported it, and later Ben Smith picked up the tidbit for Politico (this was in 2009 before he went to BuzzFeed):
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Posted: 2:53 am EDT
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Last August, we did a timeline of the Clinton email controversy (See Clinton Email Controversy Needs Its Own Cable Channel, For Now, a Timeline). Also @StateDept Officials on Clinton Private Email Debacle: Yo! Had Been Caught Off Guard? Ay, Caramba!
To recall, this report from WaPo:
But State Department officials provided new information Tuesday that undercuts Clinton’s characterization. They said the request was not simply about general record-keeping but was prompted entirely by the discovery that Clinton had exclusively used a private e-mail system. They also said they *first contacted her in the summer of 2014, at least three months before **the agency asked Clinton and three of her predecessors to provide their e-mails.
At that time, we wrote this:
If the State Department had first contacted her in the summer of 2014, we have yet to see that correspondence. It was potentially sent sometime in August 2014, three months before the letters to Clinton and predecessors went out in November 12, 2014 from “M” (see below). Three months is an early call? C’mon! Secretary Clinton left State in February 2013.
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It took six months for three senior State Department officials to tell WaPo that they “had been caught off guard” by the secretary of state’s exclusive use of a private account? These officials “were concerned by the practice”, so much so that they issued a three month-“early call” in the summer of 2014, 1 year and 6 months after the end of the Clinton tenure. And we’re only hearing about this concern now, 2 years and 7 months after Secretary Clinton left office?
Well, now we have an email (released via Judicial Watch due to FOIA litigation) from Cheryl Mills to Secretary Kerry’s Chief of Staff David Wade dated August 22, 2014 citing a request made in July 2014 about getting hard copies of the Clinton emails to/from accounts ending in .gov during her tenure at the State Department. The email was cc’ed to Philippe Raines (former Public Affairs DAS), and Deputy Legal Adviser Richard Visek.
So it looks like four months after the original request for the emails was made by Secretary Kerry’s chief of staff, the Under Secretary for Management Patrick Kennedy sent a Letter to Hilary Clinton’s representative, Cheryl Mills re: the Federal Records Act of 1950, dated November 12, 2014; to Colin Powell, to Condoleezza Rice; to Madeleine Albright saying in part:
The Department of State has a longstanding and continujng commitment to preserving the history of U.S. diplomacy, established in authorities under the Federal Records Act of 1950. l am writing to you, the representative of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, as well as to representatives of other fonner Secretaries (principals), to request your assistance in further meeting this requirement.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry poses for photo at the groundbreaking ceremony for the U.S. Diplomacy Center with former Secretaries of State Henry A. Kissinger, James A. Baker, III, Madeleine K. Albright, Colin L. Powell, and Hillary Rodham Clinton at the U.S. Department of State in Washington, DC on September 3, 2014. [State Department photo/ Public Domain]
On March 3, 2015, four months after the Kennedy letter was sent to Mills and eight months after the original request was made by Kerry’s chief of staff to Mills, then deputy spokesperson of the State Department, Marie Harf also said this from the podium:
MS. HARF: … When in the process of updating our records management – this is something that’s sort of ongoing given technology and the changes – we reached out to all of the former secretaries of state to ask them to provide any records they had. Secretary Clinton sent back 55,000 pages of documents to the State Department very shortly after we sent the letter to her. She was the only former Secretary of State who sent documents back in to this request. These 55,000 pages covered her time, the breadth of her time at the State Department.
No mention that the original request was specific to Secretary Clinton.
And the three previous secretaries of state were added here to what … enhance dramatic tension? Oy!
The letter asks for “any records.” Why did they stop at Colin Powell and did not include James Baker, heck why not go all the way to Henry Kissinger, which by the way, would have made the National Security Archive really happy (see The State Department Kissinger Telcons: The Story of a FOIA Request).
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Posted: 2:43 am EDT
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via foia.state.gov:
Anne C. Richard was Vice President, Government Relations & Advocacy, International Rescue Committee in March 2012 when this email was sent. She was appointed State Department Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (State/PRM) in April 2012.
The FOIA released email is available to read here (PDF).
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Posted: 2:52 am EDT
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The WSJ called the oldest executive agency in the union, the Department of Hillary, and accused the entire State Department of “vigorously protecting Hillary Clinton.” It asks, “how it is that the nation’s diplomatic corps has become an arm of the Clinton presidential campaign?”
That is a sweeping accusation and we do not believe that to be true, but whether it’s true or not is immaterial. The perception is widely shared, even by reporters covering the State Department. Our interest on HRC primarily relates to her tenure at State. We think that her management of the department — whether it relates to her email server, having a deputy chief of staff holding four jobs, special access to certain groups, operation in a bubble of mostly yes-people — was galling and distressing. We do agree with Prof. Jonathan Turley when he writes that he “consider the decision to use exclusively an unsecure server for “convenience” to be a breathtakingly reckless act for one of the top officials in our government.”
Last month HRC was also quoted as saying, “I’m not willing to say it was an error in judgment.”
Folks will have to make up their own minds whether they agree with her or not, but the State Department is still paying a price for it. And the way this mess has been handled places at risk the institution’s deeply held tradition that the career service stay above the political fray.
The National Security Archive bluntly writes:
[T]he Federal Records Act, federal regulations on the books at the time (36 CFR 1263.22)[Official as of October 2, 2009], and NARA guidance which the State Department received (NARA Bulletin 2011-03), should have prevented Clinton’s actions, requiring her to provide “effective controls over the creation and over the maintenance and use of records in the conduct of current business”. (Read here for our analysis of why Clinton, and hundreds of others at State, including its FOIA shop and IT department, were in the wrong for not blowing the whistle on her personal email usage.) Read more here.
At some point in the near future, there will need to be a reckoning about what the senior officials, the career senior officials in Foggy Bottom knew about what during the Clinton tenure.
On Saturday, January 24, 2009 8:26 p.m. Lewis Lukens sent an email to M/Patrick Kennedy (email released via FOIA lawsuit by Judicial Watch (PDF). Lukens who was then the Executive Secretary (he was subsequently appointed US Ambassador to Senegal and Guinea-Bissau), writes, “I talked to cheryl about this. She says problem is hrc does not know how to use a computer to do email only bb. But I said would not take much training to get her up to speed.” The email chain talks about setting up “a stand alone PC in the Secretary’s office, connected to the internet” but apparently a separate system not through the State Department system that would allow HRC to “check her emails from her desk.”
What’s the difference between using a State Department system and a stand alone system for somebody who doesn’t know how to use a computer? But more that that, we want to understand why it was necessary to set up a stand alone system. Did previous secretaries of state have their own stand alone systems? Did they have their own private email servers? Can somebody please explain why that was necessary?
This email was sent three days after HRC took the oath of office of Secretary of State (see starting page 6 below or see PDF here).
So, if they were considering setting up a stand alone PC on the 7th Floor and that did not happen, how could anyone in the top ranks of the career service not know when HRC’s people set up a private server away from the building? If they did not know, they were not doing their jobs. But if they did know, what does that mean? Did anyone speak up and consequently suffer career purgatory? Please help us understand how this happened. Email us, happy to chat with anyone in the know because this is giving us ulcers.
A related item about communications — in March 2009, the then Assistant Secretary for Diplomatic Security, Eric Boswell sent a memo to HRC’s Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills concerning the use of Blackberries in Mahogany Row. In that memo, also released via FOIA litigation with Judicial Watch, Boswell writes that “Our review reaffirms our belief that the vulnerabilities and risks associated with the use of Blackberries in Mahogany Row [redacted] considerably outweighs the convenience their use can add to staff that have access to the unclassified OpenNet system on their desktops. [redacted] We also worry about the example that using Blackberries in Mahogany Row might set as we strive to promote crucial security practices and enforce important security standards among State Department staff.”
The last paragraph of the memo says “If, after considering the vulnerabilities that I describe above and the alternatives that I propose, the Secretary determines that she wants a limited number of staff to use Blackberries in Mahogany Row …. [redacted].” (See below or see PDF here)
What the career professionals proposed can, of course, be ignored or dismissed by the political leadership. How much of it can one tolerate? Some of it, all of it?
Below is an August 30, 2011 email between then HRC deputy chief of staff Huma Abedin and Steve Mull, who we believed succeeded Lukens as Executive Secretary of the State Department. Following that assignment, he was appointed U.S. Ambassador to Poland, and last year, he was appointed Lead Coordinator for Iran Nuclear Implementation. The Daily Caller obtained the emails through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed on its behalf by Cause of Action and has reported about the emails here. It shows the top officials who were loop in on the secretary’s communications setup, but it also points to what we suspect has always been the rationale on the server and email setup that now has consequential repercussions for the agency. In one part of the email, the executive secretary writes, “We’re working with …. to hammer out the details of what will best meet the Secretary’s need.” (See below or see ScribD file here).
It is not surprising that the career folks worked to accommodate the needs of their principals. We doubt anyone would last long in any assignment if they simply tell their boss blah, blah, blah can’t be done.
But — no individual in the upper ranks, career or noncareer, has so far been shown to stand up to a principal by saying “no, this is not allowed” or “this is not acceptable,” or even something like — “this is not against the rules but it looks bad.”
Does one draw a line between public service and service to a political leadership? Are they one and the same? What would you do?
Last September 2015, WaPo reported this:
But State Department officials provided new information Tuesday that undercuts Clinton’s characterization. They said the request was not simply about general record-keeping but was prompted entirely by the discovery that Clinton had exclusively used a private e-mail system. They also said they first contacted her in the summer of 2014, at least three months before the agency asked Clinton and three of her predecessors to provide their e-mails.
[…]
But the early call from the State Department is a sign that, at the least, officials in the agency she led from 2009 to 2013 were concerned by the practice — and that they had been caught off guard upon discovering her exclusive use of a private account.
Well, we’re sure the rank and file was caught off guard but which State Department officials were actually caught off guard? At least according to the Mull-Mills email exchange of August 2011, S/ES and M were aware of the existence of Secretary Clinton’s personal email server.
So when unnamed State Department officials talked to the Washington Post journalists last year, dammit, who did they say were actually caught off guard?
If anyone at M who has oversight over IT, Diplomatic Security, FOIA and federal records cited the Federal Records Act between 2009-2013 was shipped to Timbuktu for bringing up an inconvenient regulation, we’d like to hear about it.
Make no mistake, the perception that the Service had picked a side will have repercussions for the Foreign Service and the State Department. If there is an HRC White House, we may see old familiar faces come back, or those still in Foggy Bottom, may stay on and on and just never leave like Hotel California.
But if there is a Trump or a Whoever GOP White House, we imagine the top ranks, and who knows how many levels down the bureaus will be slashed gleefully by the incoming administration. And it will not be by accident.
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Posted: 1:12 am EDT
Updated: 5:28 pm EDT
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On February 25, 2011, the State Department announced the suspension of U.S. Embassy operations in Libya (see State Dept Suspends US Embassy Operations in #Libya, Withdraws All Personnel). What we didn’t know then but we know now, thanks to the Clinton email dump, is that just a few days before that, neither the embassy nor the bureau was aware that they were suspending operations.
February 22, 2011 09:50 PM – HRC aide Jake Sullivan sent an email (partially redacted with FOIA b(5) code) to Janet A. Sanderson, the Deputy Assistant Secretary Bureau of Near East Affairs, with subject line “Suspending embassy ops” and asking “Where do we stand?”
February 22, 2011 10:14 PM – Sanderson emailed Sullivan:
Feb 22 22:18:23 2011 (10:18 PM) – Sanderson also sent an email to M/Patrick Kennedy and Kathleen T. Austin-Ferguson, M’s Executive Assistant:
February 22, 2011 10:37 PM – Kennedy responded to Sanderson saying he “talked to cheryl and tom” and that “they are also unaware.”“Checking with Secretary. At this moment we are NOT suspending. Fully agree not possible to do tomorrow and also risks libyan blow back.” Email must be referencing HRC Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills and Deputy Secretary Tom Nides.
Embassy Tripoli eventually suspended operations on February 25, three days after the start of this email chain. These emails are part of the Clinton email dump and it shows just how messed up is the FOIA at the agency.
On Feb 22 22:40:17 2011 (10:40 PM) – Sanderson responded to the Kennedy email, adding Ronald Schlicher to the email chain. Ambassador Schlicher was previously assigned to Cyprus, and also served as a DAS at the Bureau of Near East Affairs. We are not sure what was his position in 2011, but he must have been attached to NEA to be looped in in this exchange. Ambassador Schlicher was Principal DAS at the NEA bureau, and he would have been Sanderson’s boss at the time. Here’s a clip from that email:
Now, take a look at the email below with the same time stamp and same addresses, released as a separate email by the FOIA office at State:
Why, they’re the same email, except that they were released as separate documents, and in the second document, the email is redacted under the b(5) FOIA exemption, also known in the FOIA community as the “Withhold It Because You Want To” Exemption. “Yael” must have been Yael Lempert who was assigned to Tripoli as consular section chief in 2009 and featured in the NYT here for the release of four New York Times journalists in 2011 in Libya. She may have been the acting DCM at the time of the suspension of operations. “Joan” is presumably Joan Polaschik who was DCM and then CDA of Embassy Tripoli. She is currently the U.S. Ambassador to Algeria.
Here is what DOJ says about the b(5) exemption:
Exemption 5 of the FOIA protects “inter-agency or intra-agency memorandums or letters which would not be available by law to a party other than an agency in litigation with the agency.” (1) The courts have construed this somewhat opaque language, with its sometimes confusing threshold requirement, (2) to “exempt those documents, and only those documents that are normally privileged in the civil discovery context.” (3)
Here is what we are not supposed to read according to the FOIA ninjas, except that one of them forgot the Sharpie:
“I have just talked to post (Yael).She and Joan will work to reduce staff and send more out on ferry. Shd get down to 10- 12. She fully understands need for limited staff to stay to deal with community. Believes likely remainder will be position to leave in few days. Says situation is “worse than Baghdad in 2004-2005 “
No matter how you read the above passage, it is difficult to make the case that it fits the b(5) exemption unless you’re thinking of the “withhold it because you want to” exemption threshold.
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Emails in full released via FOIA below:
Suspending Ops Libya – February 22, 2011 11:05 PM: https://cloudup.com/cAlO_WHTfpc
Suspending Ops Libya February 23, 2011 7:59 AM: https://cloudup.com/cD33FlF7TCo
Suspending Ops Libya February 23, 2011 8:08 AM: https://cloudup.com/cjplOQtTEmw
Posted: 12:42 am EDT
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The email addressed to then USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah was sent in October 2010 by a USAID employee. It was shared by Dr. Shah with senior USAID and State Department officials and forwarded to HRC by Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills. Dr. Shah was USAID Administrator from January 7, 2010 to February 19, 2015. He was succeeded by Gayle Smith as USAID Administrator in December 2015.
Shah writes that he was “somewhat amazed” that somebody actually sent such a letter to him and says that he “really believe our overall narrative lacks credibility and do believe the qddr will need be a key document in terms of trying to win over the building.”
He also writes that, “For everyone one (sic) of these totally crazy emails/people there are 100 moderate people that we need to win over – and they are watching with skepticism right now.”
HRC’s response is to first “do a background check on who she is,” referring to the USAID employee. She calls the email “a typical DC bureaucratic rant,” and says it reminds her of “some of the town hall questioners I’ve had.”
The email below from a USAID employee whose name is redacted is pretty brutal, calling the then administrator of less than a year, “a patsie,” and “a puppet” while urging the USAID boss to “quit with at least some dignity…”
We have not been able to find a trail on what if ever was USAID or State’s response. Mills writes to HRC that she wants “to be helpful and creative in thinking through a response.” This document is part of the latest Clinton email dump.
Related items:
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Posted: 12:05 am EDT
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An individual whose name is redacted wrote an April 2012 email to State Department Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills saying “Disappointingly EAP was unable to nominate me for a COM position ….” and that he was “running out of option.” Mills forward the email to HRC saying she advised the individual “given his interest in Slovenia and Iceland to meet w/ Phil.” Phil is most probably Philip Gordon who served as Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs (EUR) from 2009-13.
The rejection letter/email that the aspiring ambassador received came from Joseph Yun who was then Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs (EAP) and currently U.S. Ambassador to Malaysia. The email is part of the latest Clinton email dump.
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Posted: 12:50 am EDT
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We’ve written previously about Senator Chuck Grassley’s pursuit for answers related to a State/OIG report on Trafficking in Persons (see Senator Grassley Eyes Linda Howard Case, Seeks Answers on TIP Policy and @StateDept Employees). On November 23, Senator Grassley threw a larger net and has now included questions about the State Department’s response to an old allegation related to prostitution and a U.S. ambassador. Excerpt from the letter from Senator Grassley to Secretary Kerry:
[T]he Belgium case raises questions as to whether the Department takes allegations of TIP-related misconduct seriously and investigates them thoroughly, free from undue influence and favoritism. With the foregoing in mind, I respectfully request on behalf of this Committee that you submit responses to the following questions by December 11, 2015:
1. Why did the Department halt DS’s preliminary inquiry of the Belgium case and treat this matter as a “management issue”?
2. Why did Under Secretary Kennedy, DS, and L provide OIG with three different explanations of the decisions referenced in Question 1?
3. Was Secretary Clinton informed of the decision to halt DS’s investigation of the Belgium case or to treat it as a “management issue”? If so, please provide all related records, including emails. If not, please explain why not.
4. In how many other cases involving allegations of employee misconduct was Ms. Mills designated as the individual to conduct the investigation?
5. Under Secretary Kennedy told OIG that he had relied on Section 4322.2 of the FAM to address misconduct allegations involving other Chiefs of Mission. The Under Secretary acknowledged that such misconduct issues can arise several times each year. During Mr. Kennedy’s tenure as Under Secretary, how many misconduct allegations involving Chiefs of Mission have been treated as a “management issue”?
6. OIG states that it searched for and found no contemporaneous evidence of the Under Secretary’s determinations in this case, or of Ms. Mill’s investigation.31 OIG made this finding before public revelations that Secretary Clinton and her senior aides conducted official Department business through a private email server. Does the Department currently have access to any of the records OIG was unable to find? If not, will you commit to notifying this Committee as soon as such access is obtained?
7. In September, I wrote you about Linda Howard, who was found liable in federal district court for human trafficking offenses committed against her Ethiopian housekeeper, while Howard was stationed as a diplomat at the U.S. Embassy in Japan in 2008 and 2009.32 Reportedly, however, two years after DS interviewed the victim housekeeper about those offenses, Howard not only remained employed at the Department, but even received an honor award and a cash bonus.33 Was the Linda Howard case also treated as a “management issue”?
Full letter is here:
According to that 2014 report, the OIG “discovered some evidence of disparity in DS’s handling of allegations involving prostitution. Between 2009 and 2011, DS investigated 13 prostitution-related cases involving lower-ranking officials. OIG found no evidence that any of those inquiries were halted and treated as “management issues.”
Senator Grassley has been doggedly asking questions about various State Department issues the last few years. We seriously doubt that the senator can be persuaded to drop this old bone. He’s up for reelection in 2016 so unless he is unable to multi-task, he probably will continue looking for answers on this matter. And of course, some folks will probably scream partisan witch hunt, and we can understand that, but … we also think these are actually questions that need some real answers.
Should be interesting to see what he digs up.
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Related items:
— July 16, 2015: The ambassador’s tale: Lessons I learned about success and scandal by Former U.S. Ambassador to Belgium Howard Gutman (WaPo Magazine).
— 09/30/14 Review of Selected Internal Investigations Conducted by the Bureau of Diplomatic Security (ESP-14-01) [685 Kb] Posted on October 16, 2014
— May 10, 2012 | ROP Case No. 2011-064 | FSGB grievance case (read online) that may or may not be related to the Howard case (names have been redacted) but the timeframe and circumstances appears similar, and it looks like DOJ declined to prosecute the case in 2011.
Related posts:
Posted: 3:52 am EDT
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On October 21, the Benghazi Democrats released the full transcript of Cheryl Mills interview with the Select Benghazi Committee (click here to read the full transcript).
One of the questions asked Ms. Mills, Secretary Clinton’s former chief of staff was the allegation made by former NEA Deputy Assistant Secretary Raymond Maxwell about a document scrub (see Former State Dept DAS Raymond Maxwell Alleges Benghazi Document Scrub Pre-ARB Investigation).
Ms. Mills says this (per transcript):
“I might have had an encounter with him when he was being hired. I don’t know. Meaning, ensuring that he was in a place where he could be appointed or hired. I don’t know. But I don’t — I never had an encounter with Ray Maxwell around Benghazi.”
In a follow-up question, clipped below, Ms. Mills basically gave a word salad about the “hiring” of Mr. Maxwell. What the frak? We should note that Mr. Maxwell, at the time he was thrown under the Benghazi bus, had served 21 years in the career Foreign Service in addition to 6 years enlistment in the Navy Nuclear Power program. He earned a Naval Reserved commission then completed two division officer tours in the guided missile destroyer, the USS Luce (DDG-38); a total of about 14 years in the Navy, before joining the Foreign Service.
We have extracted the parts where Ms. Mills talked about Mr. Maxwell with the Committee. Available to read here: Mills Transcript-RayMaxwell Extract.
Last year, we wrote The Cautionary Tale of Raymond Maxwell: When the Bureaucracy Bites, Who Gets The Blame?).
Sometime after that, we were able to read for the first time, the original grievance Ray Maxwell wrote on April 3, 2013 (pdf) addressed to State Department HR official Linda Taglialatela. Maxwell writes:
On December 18, 2012, the ARB Report was released. When I returned to my office after lunch, A/S Beth Jones’ OMS told me to meet with her at 2 pm. At 2:20 A/ S Jones returned to the office and summoned me. She invited me in and closed the door. She told me the ARB report had been released and that it was not complimentary to the Department, to NEA, or to me. She said PDAS Elizabeth Dibble was reading the classified report in the SCIF, and that she had not yet seen it. Then she said she had been instructed by Cheryl Mills to relieve me of the DAS position, that I was fired, and that I should have all my personal belongings out of the office be close of business that same day. She said PDAS Dibble would identify a place where I could keep my belongings, and that I would remain in the Bureau as a senior adviser. She said the Bureau was going to take care of me and that I didn’t need to “lawyer up.”
Just like that.
Former FSO Peter Van Buren wrote about this previously here:
Maxwell impresses as a State Department archetype, dedicated to the insular institution, apolitical to the point of frustration to an outsider, but shocked when he found his loyalty was not returned.
He has revealed what he knows only two years after the fact. People will say he is out for revenge. But I don’t think that’s the case. As a State Department whistleblower who experienced how the Department treats such people, I know it’s not a position anyone wants to be in.
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You don’t just wake up one morning and decide to turn your own life, and that of your family, upside down, risking financial ruin, public shaming, and possibly jail time. It is a process, not an event.
The ARB’s approach to assigning accountability within NEA for the failures that led to the Benghazi tragedy is puzzling. The ARB identified “systemic failures and leadership and management deficiencies at senior levels” within NEA. It seems obvious that a “systemic failure” within a large organization such as NEA could only result from a widespread failure throughout the system, either to recognize the challenges posed by the inadequate security posture of the Benghazi mission in a deteriorating environment, or else to take the appropriate steps to rectify it in order to safeguard American lives. Yet within the entire NEA Bureau, the ARB singled out only Raymond Maxwell, for conduct his own supervisor contended was not “material” to what happened in Benghazi.
If Ambassador Jones and others are right, and the intelligence Maxwell stopped reading was not material because NEA was essentially powerless to affect the actions of DS in Benghazi, it is unclear why the ARB blamed Maxwell for not reading it. If the intelligence did provide some kind of insight which could have prevented the failures of Benghazi, it is further unclear why Maxwell was held accountable for not reading it, but Ambassador Jones and others within NEA were not held accountable for having read it and taken no effective steps to remedy the shortcomings of the Benghazi compound’s security posture before it led to a loss of life?
So about 31 35 years working for Uncle Sam, and one day, one is conveniently fired. And expected to lay back and play dead until the Benghazi train passes by.
Playing dead is needed for the proper functioning of the Service?
Excuse me, I need to throw up. Again.
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