Archives for 2015

ICYMI: Agencies Submit FOIA Reports After Cause of Action Gives Them “F’s”

Just hours after Cause of Action issued failing grades to the Departments of Treasury and Education on its 2015 Grading the Government Report Card, both agencies submitted their annual Freedom of Information Act reports for fiscal year 2014.

Cause of Action President Dan Epstein issued the following statement:

“Although they missed their mandated deadline by more than six weeks, we are happy to see the Education and Treasury Departments publicize their annual FOIA reports.

 

However, we’re disappointed that it took Sunshine Week and external pressure to get these agencies to comply with the law.

 

The federal government has a duty to operate transparently, and part of that includes making sure that annual reports are released on schedule.”

Bipartisan Open Government Coalition Calls For Independent Verification Of Clinton Emails

New letter asks State Department and National Archivist to investigate

A bipartisan coalition of government accountability organizations released a letter today calling for further investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails.

The letter, which is addressed to Secretary of State John Kerry and National Archivist David Ferriero, asks both men to “verify that Secretary Clinton’s emails containing federal records are transferred to the Department of State in their original electronic form, so that all such emails may be accessible pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act.”

“The task of determining which emails constitute federal records should not be left solely to Mrs. Clinton’s personal aides,” the letter states. “Rather, the Archivist and State Department should oversee the process to ensure its independence and objectivity. To the extent that it is ascertained that any record emails were deleted, they should be retrieved if technically possible.”

Cause of Action President Dan Epstein issued the following statement:

“Secretary Clinton’s exclusive use of a private email system during her tenure as the head of the State Department potentially violated the Federal Records Act, was a clear breach of the State Department’s internal rules governing electronic communication and may have been a deliberate attempt to circumvent public oversight,” said Cause of Action President Dan Epstein. “The only way to ensure a transparent and open government is for public officials to follow the letter of the law. Secretary Clinton failed to adhere to that standard, and that is why our coalition is asking the Secretary of State and the National Archivist to take action.”

CLICK HERE TO READ THE LETTER

The full list of co-signers includes: Cause of Action, Society of Professional Journalists, The Sunlight Foundation, Defending Dissent Foundation, Electronic Frontier Foundation, MuckRock, National Coalition for History, National Security Archive, National Security Counselors, OpenTheGovernment.org, Pirate Times, and Project on Government Oversight (POGO).

Politico: Groups want digital copies of Hillary Clinton emails

Read the full story: Politico

A coalition of openness, historical and journalistic organizations is asking the State Department and the National Archives to attempt to retrieve digital copies of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emails.

 

In a letter sent Tuesday to current Secretary of State John Kerry and Archivist of the United States David Ferriero, the groups complain that Clinton jeopardized the integrity of important government records by conducting her official business on a private email account and returning selected emails—in response to a State Department request—almost two years after leaving office.

 

“The manner in which the former Secretary’s emails were segregated from and only later returned to the State Department can set a dangerous precedent for future agency appointees,” the groups wrote in their letter (posted here). “Because it is of the utmost importance that all of former Secretary Clinton’s emails are properly preserved and transferred back to the State Department for accountability and historical record purposes, we are asking that you verify that Secretary Clinton’s emails containing federal records are transferred to the Department of State in their original electronic form, so that all such emails may be accessible pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act.”

Washington Examiner: Transparency groups want Clinton’s emails preserved electronically for public

Read the full story: Washington Examiner

A broad-based coalition of non-profit advocates for greater transparency and accountability in the federal asked Secretary of State John Kerry and Archivist of the United States David Fierro to make publicly available in electronic format all of Hillary Clinton’s private emails dealing with official business.

 

“Because it is of the utmost importance that all of former Secretary Clinton’s emails are properly preserved and transferred back to the State Department for accountability and historical record purposes, we are asking that you verify that Secretary Clinton’s emails containing federal records are transferred to the Department of State in their original electronic form, so that all such emails may be accessible pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act,” the coalition said in a letter to the officials.

 

The coalition includes Cause of Action, Defending Dissent Foundation, Electronic Frontier Foundation, MuckRock, National Coalition for History, National Security Archive, National Security Counselors, OpenTheGovernment.org, Pirate Times, Project on Government Oversight, Society of Professional Journalists and the Sunlight Foundation.

Daily Caller: Watchdog Groups Call On State Department To Force Clinton To Turn Over Her Emails

Read the full story: Daily Caller 

A bipartisan coalition of government transparency advocates is asking that the State Department to ensure that all of Hillary Clinton’s emails pertaining to official government business are turned over to the agency.

 

A dozen watchdog groups sent a letter on Tuesday to Sec. of State John Kerry and National Archivist David Ferreiro asking them to “verify that Secretary Clinton’s emails containing federal records are transferred to the Department of State in their original electronic form, so that all such emails may be accessible pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act.”

 

The letter comes during Sunshine Week, an annual event in which advocates for open government push for greater transparency.

USA Today: Three transparency laws Hillary may have violated: Column

March 16, 2015, 12:24 p.m. EDT

Three transparency laws Hillary may have violated: Column

By: Dan Epstein

Six years ago today, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sent a memo on the Freedom of Information Act to the entire Department of State. It stated that “Preserving the record of our deliberations, decisions, and actions will be at the foundation of our efforts to promote openness.”

So much for that. Today, we know that Clinton took extraordinary steps to prevent any record of her “deliberations, decisions, and actions.” During her entire tenure as Secretary of State, she exclusively utilized a private email account run through servers located at her home in Chappaqua, New York. This arrangement prevented the federal government from maintaining any record of her email communications — a slap in the face to anyone who cares about government transparency and an obvious example of hypocrisy given the memo Clinton sent to her staff in 2009.

Clinton has since attempted to address this crisis of transparency by selectively releasing the emails which she claims pertained to her work as Secretary of State. Of the 62,320 emails she has admitted to sending between 2009 and 2013, she has handed over 30,490 — in the form of 55,000 printed pages which may have been edited — to the Department of State. The remaining emails — nearly 32,000 — were apparently destroyed.

This raises obvious questions about whether the former first lady broke federal law. So far, she may have violated at least three laws.

First, she may have violated the Federal Records Act. Even in 2009, this law required Clinton to “ensure that Federal records sent or received” on her private email “are preserved in the appropriate agency record keeping system.” Clinton claims to have fulfilled this law by turning over 55,000 pages of emails to the Department of State, but the full truth cannot be known until and unless investigators are able to access her private email server. The penalties for violating the Federal Records Act include fines, jail time or disqualification from holding any office under the United States.

The second law Clinton may have violated is Section 1924 of Title 18 of the U.S. Code, which forbids federal employees from retaining classified information in an unauthorized manner — such as in a personal email. A 2009 Executive Order by President Barack Obama has a similar ban on such activity. Clinton has sought to address this problem by claiming that her emails never dealt with classified information, yet this is highly unlikely given her role as Secretary of State.

And finally, Clinton may have violated the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). By utilizing a private email server beyond the control of the State Department, her email records will never be subject to FOIA requests — the most basic tool in keeping Washington transparent. In fact, Clinton may have used a private email server precisely to evade FOIA.

Given Clinton’s intransigence and unwillingness to give investigators access to her private email server, we cannot yet know with full certainty whether she broke these three laws. Fortunately, it is still possible for government watchdogs to obtain relevant records and information that shed light on this issue.

On March 9, Cause of Action — the legal advocacy group for which I am executive director — sent three unique Freedom of Information Act requests to the Department of State, the Department of State Inspector General and the National Archives and Records Administration. Our FOIA requests seek records that may contain answers to five specific questions:

  1. Why did the State Department allow Clinton to use personal devices for official agency business in the first place?
  2. Did Clinton attend training on the proper preservation of records?
  3. Once Clinton’s use of a private email account was discovered, did the federal government seek to preserve the records in her possession?
  4. Was Clinton ever investigated by the inspector general or another federal agency for her email practices?
  5. And did the National Archives and Records Administration know about Secretary Clinton’s emails? If so, why did they not inform Congress, as required by federal law?

The public deserves answers to these important questions — they will give us a more accurate picture of the actions surrounding Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email account. We may not have the answers now, but one thing is still certain: she did not fulfill her own promise as Secretary of State to preserve “the record of our deliberations, decisions, and actions.” Then again, she may never have received that memo in the first place — it might have gone to her non-existent .gov account.

Dan Epstein is the executive director of Cause of Action.

Washington Free Beacon: Federal Agencies Get Poor Marks on Sunshine Week Scorecards

Read the full story: Washington Free Beacon

Despite President Obama’s pledge to run the “most transparent administration in history,” federal agencies are still struggling to meet White House benchmarks, and at least three ignored Freedom of Information Act reporting requirements, according to several recent reports released in conjunction with Sunshine Week.

 

The government watchdog group Cause of Action released a Freedom of Information Act report card for 15 federal agencies that receive the bulk of all FOIA requests. Six of the 15 agencies received failing grades. Three agencies—the Departments of Education, Homeland Security and Treasury—earned “F” grades for failing to comply with the law’s annual reporting requirements.

 

“Our oversight mission—which focuses on transparency, and accountability in the Federal government—depends upon agency compliance with FOIA,” Cause of Action executive director Dan Epstein said in a statement. “Based on our findings over the past three years, Cause of Action has no reason to believe that agency performance under FOIA has improved, which is simply unacceptable to taxpayers who deserve a government that operates in the open.”