So Secretary of State John Kerry has complained that a judge’s demand that the State Department provide his predecessor Hillary Clinton’s emails to investigators is tying up diplomacy? According to the Washington Examiner:
“We have more than 50 … simultaneous investigations going on, and we have an unprecedented number of FOIA requests,” Kerry told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “I have had to cannibalize bureaus to get people to go spend their time on these requests.” “I’m concerned about it because this is tying up international diplomats,” he said.
Secretary of State John Kerry testifies before a Senate Foreign Relations Committee, February 23, 2016. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas.
That’s rich for a number of reasons.
I worked on the Iraq desk in the Office of the Secretary of Defense during the initial years of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Already, by 2003 and 2004, as the decision to use military force in Iraq was becoming controversial politically, Kerry decided he would be against it rather than for it. Kerry and his colleagues peppered the Pentagon with any number of letters chasing conspiracy theories voiced initially by the Lyndon LaRouche organization, wasting thousands of man-hours in simply responding. And yet, even Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld understood that the Congress represents the people and that it was imperative to divert personnel to respond to congressional queries, relevant or bizarre.
Then there’s the factual problem that international diplomats are based overseas and none — absolutely none — have been recalled to help clear paperwork.
And, of course, Kerry famously doesn’t work with or rely on a broad swath of State Department diplomats. Rather, he is infamous for his reliance on a closed inner circle, isolating himself much as President Obama has insulated himself in a bubble including just a handful of aides.
Most important is the simple issue that the law matters. There’s a tendency among senior administration lawyers to see themselves as above the law; it is an attitude as arrogant as it is corrosive to good governance.
Enough complaining. The State Department never need have gotten itself in this situation if professionals within the organization stood up to Clinton and her staff initially, and then had Kerry and his aides not consistently tried to slow roll their response. Secretary Kerry, it’s time to put blame where blame is due.
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