State Dept. Stonewalls About Temporary IG

State Department officials are battling a pair of Freedom of Information Act requests for emails and memos that discuss the agency's temporary inspector general and the influence Hillary Clinton and her staff may have had on his oversight of the agency.

Citizens United, a conservative nonprofit, also sought any documentation of high-level discussions about a February 2013 inspector general report published just as Clinton exited the State Department in the FOIA requests it filed in September of last year.

The State Department argued Friday the "nature and scope" of the group's requests were too broad to estimate how many records might have mentioned the interim inspector general, the controversial report or a Government Accountability Office report from April 2011 that raised many of the same concerns about allowing a temporary watchdog to head the agency.

State Department officials noted in the court filings that they expect to finish digitizing the 55,000 printed pages of emails Clinton turned over to the agency last year by mid-June.

According to the 2013 inspector general report in question, the agency's Bureau of Diplomatic Security Special Investigation Division was susceptible to "undue influence" from senior State Department officials.

Investigators with the diplomatic security office faced "a significant potential for undue influence, favoritism, and potential retribution," the report said.

"[S]ome [investigators] had indeed felt such pressure," the inspector general wrote.

Lawmakers have questioned why the State Department opted to leave the inspector general position empty for more than five years, creating the longest such vacancy in the history of any federal agency.

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