Diplomats fear Tillerson transparency push is linked to Clinton emails

[DonViejo]

State Department officials are suspicious of a plan to release thousands of official records amid conservative calls for more of Hillary Clinton's records.

By NAHAL TOOSI 11/07/2017 05:03 AM EST

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s assignment of as many as several hundred State Department officials to quickly clear a huge backlog of public records requests is being met with deep skepticism by rank-and-file employees.

Tillerson says his goal is transparency. But many State workers fear the real reason is political: expediting the public release of thousands of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s official emails.

The staffers also suspect the move — which will reassign many of them from far more substantive duties and has already sparked a union complaint — is meant to force many of them to resign out of frustration with what are essentially clerical positions.

The issue spotlights the deepening distrust towards Tillerson at Foggy Bottom, where his attempts to restructure the department, cut its budget and centralize policy-making have already hurt morale. But it is drawing applause from conservative groups, who have been pressuring Tillerson to act on a backlog of 13,000 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests — many of them relating to emails and other records from Clinton’s tenure.

“We haven't understood why there's been a slow-walking of releasing records, and we've been quite public in counseling the administration to take an approach of extreme transparency,” said Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, a conservative activist group that has sued the Trump administration for more Clinton documents.

more
https://www.politico.com/story/2017/11/07/tillerson-state-clinton-emails-244626

[bettyellen]

1. Of course the least transparent administration does this....

There won't even be anything left on paper about their own years in the WH. Unless it's from surveillance.