Earlier this year, Cause of Action sought documents from the State Department OIG and the National Archives and Record Administration (“NARA”) regarding Hillary Clinton’s use of a private server to conduct official State Department business.
The State Department OIG claimed that there were no responsive documents to our FOIA requests from Harold Geisel’s tenure as the department’s Acting Inspector General.
[Letter from Erich O. Hart, General Counsel, Dep’t of State OIG to Cause of Action (May 15, 2015)]
NARA, however, confirmed that responsive OIG records existed, though it claimed exemption(s) over any such document(s).
[PDF pp. 1-2: Letter from Joseph A. Scanlon, FOIA Officer, NARA to Cause of Action (May 20, 2015)]
Emails show that, as early as 2012, NARA officials were concerned that Mrs. Clinton might alienate federal records from government control.
By 2012, the State Department had replaced its outdated cable communication system with the State Messaging and Archive Retrieval Toolset (“SMART”), which “contains an email management component for capturing record email.”
[Politico: Dep’t of State, Summary Current State of Records Management at the State Department, at 2 (Mar. 27, 2012) http://images.politico.com/global/2015/03/18/statenara2012.pdf]
SMART is supposed to operate so that when “Department personnel send cables and record emails, a copy of the message is automatically sent to the Department’s official archive, which is an enterprise-wide electronic repository.”
[Politico: Dep’t of State, Summary Current State of Records Management at the State Department, at 2 (Mar. 27, 2012) http://images.politico.com/global/2015/03/18/statenara2012.pdf]
Since 2009, however, NARA consistently identified problems with the SMART system as a permanent recordkeeping system at the State Department, but no action was taken to address the issues.
NARA also was aware of the failures across the State Department to retain record emails.
Despite this awareness, NARA, under then-acting IG James E. Springs, failed to secure Mrs. Clinton’s emails in July 2014, although it had the opportunity, as implied in meeting notes between NARA and State.
During that same July 2014 meeting between NARA and State, NARA notes, “program office using gmail with no r/k system — Must be maintained in r/k system *which should be the eRSC*” The handwritten notes even indicate, “adoption of Google Aps at DOI has almost been a total disaster.”
[PDF p. 53: NARA – State Dep’t Meeting Notes, eRSC Meeting (July 14, 2014)]
In October 2014, NARA had reason to know that the State Department was seeking a legal justification for noncompliance with applicable regulations relating to email records.
In February 2015, weeks before news emerged revealing Hillary Clinton had been using a private email server during her tenure as Secretary of State, the State Department sent a memo to NARA that would suggest State and NARA were both aware of email preservation issues with State Department Senior Officials.
The memo alerted NARA that the State Department had recently issued guidelines “reminding [Senior Officials] of their overall records management responsibilities, including e-mail, and issued a directive to preserve electronically the e-mail of Senior Officials upon their departure from the Department.”
[Letter from DOS Under Secretary for Management Patrick Kennedy to NARA Archivist David Ferrerio (February 2, 2015) http://foia.state.gov/_docs/Records/FY2014%20Senior%20Agency%20Official%20for%20Records%20Management%20Annual%20Report.pdf]
Given NARA’s stated concerns with SMART, its knowledge in 2012, its opportunity to remedy in 2014, and its knowledge of the State Department’s efforts to remedy the process in February 2015, NARA either was aware of the failure to preserve Hillary Clinton’s emails or was extremely negligent in its efforts to monitor the preservation of senior officials’ emails.
