By Charles S. Clark
April 10, 2015
The State Department agreed back on April 2 to investigate department-wide email preservation policies in the wake of the controversy over Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server, the National Archives and Records Administration announced on Thursday.
Archives’ release of State’s correspondence came hours after a former Archives litigator and other records management experts appearing on a panel expressed anguish at the slow pace at which the government is complying with email recordkeeping requirements.
Secretary of State John Kerry has asked State’s inspector general to review the agency’s recordkeeping and FOIA practices, said the letterfrom Deputy Assistant Secretary for Global Information Services Margaret Grafeld. The letter was in response to a March 3 message from Archives Chief Records Officer Paul Wester Jr.
Grafeld’s letter stressed State’s “longstanding demonstrated commitment to managing our records” in partnership with the Archives. It described formation of a “working group” led by Undersecretary of State for Management Patrick Kennedy last year that produced an August 2014 memo to senior State leaders reminding them of record keeping obligations and warning them not to use private email. “Secretaries Clinton and [Colin] Powell had used non-government accounts during their tenures, but the degree to which records were captured in the department’s systems was unknown,” it said. The 55,000 emails Clinton turned over to State in December, the letter noted, are being reviewed for responsiveness to Freedom of Information Act requests.
Not included in the response was any information on Clinton’s original decision to set up a private email server.
“Where was everyone?” demanded Jason R. Baron, former director of litigation for the Archives, speaking at an open government panel at the National Press Club Thursday.
