State Department discovers 'thousands' of previously undisclosed Clinton documents

The Department of State recently discovered “thousands” of previously unreviewed documents that relate to Hillary Clinton and the Benghazi attack, according to a watchdog group that has been suing the department to release public records from Clinton’s tenure.

www.foxnews.com...


It is time. This post really has nothing to to with Hillary Clinton, other than her name being involved.


It is time.


Time to clean up the federal government agencies.... From the State Department to the VA.....this has got to stop... inept keeping of records and documents has no excuse.

And they wonder why people think the government is corrupt...Every time a story like this comes out, it shows exactly how some agencies are ran.....totally inept.

a reply to: RickinVa

Where you see ineptitude, a more cynical individual might see plausible deniability of a sort.

It is much better to be thought a fool, than to be known as a traitor.

a reply to: TrueBrit

Either way, it has to stop. I would like to think of it as more of a severe lack to follow protocol than a deliberate attempt to hide information....


One is just plain old sloppy handing of documents,,,, the other is something entirely different.

Rather than link FauxNews.

Let's get it from the source.


www.judicialwatch.org...

Judicial Watch announced today that the Obama State Department recently found “thousands” of new records from Hillary Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State. According to information provided to Judicial Watch by various Justice Department attorneys, the new documents appear be “working” records in electronic format located on both “shared” and “individual” drives accessible to or used by persons identified as being relevant to Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits on the Benghazi scandal and controversies from Clinton’s term at State. The State Department confirmed the new find in a court filing late this past Friday in a FOIA lawsuit concerning records about Clinton aide Huma Abedin:

After State filed its motion for summary judgment in this case [on November 11, 2015], State located additional sources of documents that originated within the Office of the Secretary that are reasonably likely to contain records responsive to Plaintiff’s request. State has informed Plaintiff that it intends to search these locations, produce non-exempt portions of any responsive records, and file a supplemental declaration in support of its motion for summary judgment (which is presently stayed).

I'd say that the State Department sees that Hilary is going under and the rats are abandoning the sinking ship instead of continuing to bail.

a reply to: RickinVa

Yes, they are very different, but given the fact that when government departments would prefer that information remain unavailable to enquiring minds, they habitually misplace documents. The CIA do it, the IRS do it, and this "mismanagement of information" often results in an inability to probe or prosecute with a solid foundation, those who are suspected of actual wrongdoing, from individuals, to entire infrastructures.

One of the key reasons that proper information security and compartmentalisation is necessary, is to prevent folks getting away with playing silly buggers with that data, either foreign parties, or those in power/positions of power.

This story is probably less than it seems.

Judicial Watch's request was very broad, asking for "public records related to Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state, the Clinton Foundation, the employment arrangements of Clinton’s top aides, and her response to the Benghazi attack."

It's unsurprising that there are thousands of records in those areas that the State Department hasn't reviewed. And probably none of them have anything to do with Benghazi.

Most probably fall into the amorphous category of "public records related to Clinton's tenure as secretary of state".

The real story here is probably that State wants to bury Judicial Watch in a bunch of erroneous documents, hoping that if there is anything to find, they won't have time to find it prior to the election.

a reply to: RickinVa

the downward spiral - I hope this is it

a reply to: TrueBrit

All I can do is go by my personal experiences.... I remember the day when I found out out I had been selected for a position with the FBI... I was estatic to be moving to what I thought would be a high speed job like what I saw in movies.. only to be severely disappointed.

18 years with the Dept of the Army, whom I often felt was so far behind new technology.... about 5-7 years on average...now I was going to the high speed FBI, only to find out after arrival that the FBI was a good 10 years behind the Army...

I have worked with literally thousands of government worker bees, the vast majority of them are good people and hard workers, a lot of times frustrated by antiquated equipment and policies that kept them from doing their jobs efficiently.

It is time to revamp the system... it is broken.

As far as those who deliberately hide information, they are at the top of the pile. They need to go.

originally posted by: grey580
Rather than link FauxNews.

Let's get it from the source.


www.judicialwatch.org...

Judicial Watch announced today that the Obama State Department recently found “thousands” of new records from Hillary Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State. According to information provided to Judicial Watch by various Justice Department attorneys, the new documents appear be “working” records in electronic format located on both “shared” and “individual” drives accessible to or used by persons identified as being relevant to Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits on the Benghazi scandal and controversies from Clinton’s term at State. The State Department confirmed the new find in a court filing late this past Friday in a FOIA lawsuit concerning records about Clinton aide Huma Abedin:

After State filed its motion for summary judgment in this case [on November 11, 2015], State located additional sources of documents that originated within the Office of the Secretary that are reasonably likely to contain records responsive to Plaintiff’s request. State has informed Plaintiff that it intends to search these locations, produce non-exempt portions of any responsive records, and file a supplemental declaration in support of its motion for summary judgment (which is presently stayed).

So...JW issues a FOIA request for these docs...and 'SHAZAMM' the State Dept. just happens to discover them?
Sounds innocent enough.

a reply to: grey580

I still find it to be somewhat humorous how quickly people are to dismiss something based solely on which news source it comes from.

Post it by Fox News... it is instantly OMG... its Fox News, it is total BS... post proof!!! we demand proof.

Post it by Judicial Watch.... same exact information,,,, it is grab the pitchforks and burn the witch!!!

The irony of it all. lol

originally posted by: Moresby
This story is probably less than it seems.

I agree, especially when you see what these "documents" are--computer files on hard drives. It's not like there is this big room with piles of unfiled documents that have suddenly been discovered and previously hidden from the public. When some watchdog group files these FOIA requests what they are actually asking for, whether they know it or not, is complete copies of all the hard drives of all the employees who ever worked on or near a project.

This is a MASSIVE amount of information, 99% of which is completely irrelevant. And many times these requests aren't really designed to find out heretofore secretive information. They are designed to harass. And both the left and the right use it. Examples:

Right-wing: A library near me got involved with a citizen's group that was attacking the library for allowing pornography on public access computers. Bear in mind the pornography itself is LEGAL and denying the public to view pornography can be seen as an infringement of their rights to free speech. BUT because of the local FOIA act this citizen group began to pepper the library with requests that amounted to everything the library had ever produced. Meeting minutes, memos, emails--EVERYTHING. So the library was forced to hire a full time person just to handle these requests in a timely manner.

Left-wing: This is exactly what happened to Sarah Palin in Alaska. (I don't care if you don't like her. That's irrelevant.) The Alaska state government nearly shut down because of the volume of FOIA requests sent to the governor's office. This cost the taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars to respond, so she resigned. She was effectively driven from office by these haters.

So when OP and others declare this "incompetence has got to stop!" they really have no idea what they are asking or saying. These documents are not neatly filed in dewey decimal system order just waiting for someone to ask to check them out. They are buried on shared drives in no particular order where one hard drive might have thousands of files, (oh, I mean "documents") that cannot be simply copied onto a thumb drive and handed over to any old "group" that wants them. I just counted and my own computer, an everyday laptop, has over a thousand "documents" on it. And that's just one of five working computers in the house not counting a couple of retired ones. You want the "documents' On my old DOS/Windows 3.11 computer in a desk drawer upstairs? Good luck with that.

So what we have is yet another sensationalistic news story that is misleading to begin with, and to which people react with this faux "outrage" over something they don't even understand.

a reply to: RickinVa

Context is important.

Whenever I see news from only the right or left I call bs until I can verify elsewhere.

This is a very good life lesson to know.

a reply to: schuyler

It goes by agencies, and different agencies have different polices... there is no cohesion.

I could easily do a FOIA request on my name on the hundred or so documents or thousands of emails I wrote from my time of employment from the FBI and it would take them very little time to respond. They do a very good job of keeping track of documents. Other agencies would take forever because they have no idea where they stored, or if they stored it.

The system is broken and needs to be fixed. That is all I am saying.

originally posted by: grey580
a reply to: RickinVa

Context is important.

Whenever I see news from only the right or left I call bs until I can verify elsewhere.

This is a very good life lesson to know.

I try to keep an open mind as much as I can.

I prefer try for the most part to not dismiss something until it is proven to be false. I won't go so far as so say that I am instantly suspicious of something right off the bat, but I won't dismiss it until I have as much information as I can.

If you instantly decide that something is BS based on because it is Fox News or Washington Times or whatever, then you are just as biased as the new sources that you dismiss for being biased. At least that is how I see it.

A prime example is enenews.com.... They are extremely anti nuclear biased and they post tons of crazy doomsday porn crap and have a rabid base of fanatical delusional posters, but every once in a while they post excellent news that can be validated from other sources as being legitimate. I would miss some news if I simply decided not to go there because I know they are biased.

I guess you can be lucky the documents are still there. Over here agencies have 'accidentally' ordered their employees to do an all-nighter and destroy the documents in question in a few cases like this... Oops!