Fmr. DOJ FOIA Director on Clinton Aide’s Missing Emails: ‘It Stinks to High Heavens’

[antigop]

http://lawnewz.com/high-profile/fmr-doj-foia-director-say-its-suspicious-that-clinton-aide-paglianos-emails-are-missing

On Monday, the State Department said that it couldn’t find any emails from senior information technology staffer Bryan Pagliano from when he worked for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

“The Department has searched for Mr. Pagliano’s email pst file and has not located one that cover the time period of Secretary Clinton’s tenure,” a State Department spokesman told ABC News, adding they did find emails from his time as a contractor. The latest revelation is a result of a FOIA lawsuit filed by the Republican National Committee. Now if Pagliano’s name sounds familiar, that’s because earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Justice (likely through a federal judge) reportedly granted immunity to Pagliano. He helped set-up Clinton’s privately maintained email server.

So understandably, there are a lot of questions right now about how it could be possible that the State Department could not find a single work-related email from his time with Clinton. So to flesh this all out, LawNewz.com spoke with FOIA legal experts from around the country. Here’s what’s interesting, all contend that what happened is very, very unusual, and even “suspicious.” One of most interesting comments came from Dan Metcalfe who served as the founding director of the Justice Department’s Office of Information and Privacy. For decades, Metcalfe served as the federal government’s information disclosure guru. Not only does he believe that what happened raises suspicions, he summed it up this way: “the whole thing stinks to high heaven.”

[scscholar]

1. If there were none sent, then...

there's none "missing." Geez. That's basic logic. They're starting with a biased position.

[CorporatistNation]

3. WHAT Do You Expect From Someone Of Such "Sterling" Character?

[scscholar]

17. What evidence do you have that he doesn't have...

a "sterling" character? I haven't heard anything personal about him yet.

[CentralCoaster]

4. Nope. He's been testifying under immunity, he's been a busy busy boy with emails.

He is, in fact, understood to be the guru of setting up remote work capabilities.

Testimony is ongoing, but sealed. There is no proof that there are or are not email communications between him and others but just use your imagination.

I think this is looking very bad for Hillary Clinton.

Not good.

[tk2kewl]

7. right...

Pagliano took a job with Information Resource Management at DOS and never received an email from any of his colleagues, superiors or even HR.

[Travis_0004]

8. Im not good at detecting sarcasm

But I would find it tough to believe that an IT manager didnt send a single email.

[silvershadow]

2. It stinks, alright, and I don't want it tainting my good name. nt

[Octafish]

5. Isn't that unusual?

Not even a single "welcome to the team" email?

Government workers I know all have to sign up for network security class, even if they're boss level.

No paper trail is spy like.



Professional double-nought grade spy.

[pacalo]

6. But we should believe her election numbers are pure & untainted.

One very involved case of obstruction of the truth doesn't mean a very disliked but ambitious politician would cheat to win an election. Right?

[dsc]

9. well I am no expert but I can read

and State isn't saying they didn't find any emails they said they didn't find an archive. They explicitly said they did find emails.

[DVRacer]

11. That actually makes what they are saying worse.

If you have an email but no .pst log file then that proves the log file was erased. That's how an MS Exchange server works you make and send an email and it creates a little log file that says you sent it. With the log file deleted or missing makes it appear deliberate.

[dsc]

12. they have apparently lost many emails

the ones the have are, in many cases, ones that were on the vile Clinton server.

[KeepItReal]

16. Yes.

Hopefully it was not deleted on purpose by someone.

They would have to have had access to the Exchange server's file system (with everyone's .pst log files) in order to remove that particular one.

[Sancho]

10. eGhazi: Dan Metcalfe appears to be an incompetent crackpot

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/3/16/1371415/-eGhazi-Don-Metcalfe-appears-to-be-an-incompetent-crackpot

So Dan Metcalfe is back at it again. The former FOIA person for the Justice Department, with an assist from Politico, continues to spout uniformed nonsense on eGhazi.

Now Mr. Metcalfe has had weeks at this point to familiarize himself with regulations he apparently had no notion of when he was DOJ's "head honcho" on FOIA. Clearly he did not. And just as clearly, he is an incompetent crackpot. Shame on Politico for publishing his drivel.

[KoKo]

14. Dan Metcalf's Bio...Pretty Impressive despite what that Kos person says...

Daniel J. Metcalfe
Adjunct Professor of Law--American University--Washington College of Law

Dan Metcalfe joined the faculty of WCL in 2007 as a Faculty Fellow in Law and Government upon retiring from a career in government service that began at the Department of Justice nearly 45 years ago. As an adjunct professor at WCL, he teaches courses in government secrecy law and served as Executive Director of the school's Collaboration on Government Secrecy (CGS). In 1981, after a judicial clerkship and serving as a Justice Department trial attorney, he was appointed to the position of founding director of the Department's Office of Information and Privacy (OIP). For more than a quarter-century in that position, he guided all federal agencies on the government-wide administration of the Freedom of Information Act, directly supervised the defense of more than 500 FOIA and Privacy Act lawsuits in district and appellate courts, testified before Congress on FOIA amendment legislation and authored Attorney General FOIA memoranda for successive presidential administrations, and met with representatives of nearly 100 nations and international governing bodies as they considered the development and implementation of their own government transparency laws. He became a career member of the Senior Executive Service in 1984, the youngest Justice Department attorney then and since to hold such a position.

In 2010, Professor Metcalfe was appointed as a member of the World Bank's Access to Information Appeals Board, an independent tribunal empowered to make final decisions on appeals taken under the Bank's new worldwide information disclosure policy, together with board members from India and France holding final authority to order the public disclosure of World Bank records. In 2009, he was a member of the U.S. delegation to the Inaugural Sino-American Dialogue on Rule of Law and Human Rights in China, followed up by further dialogues in Xiemen and Beijing in 2010 and New York in 2011, and he has given dozens of presentations on international transparency around the world. On behalf of CGS, he has testified before both the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and the Senate Judiciary Committee as an expert on governmentwide FOIA administration and the proper implementation of new FOIA policy. Most recently, he was elected as a Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration and successfully litigated a Privacy Act lawsuit on behalf of Department of Justice Honors Program applicants who were subjected to a corrupt political screening process during the tenure of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Professor Metcalfe has held positions as an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at University College London and as a contributing editor of the Administrative Law & Regulatory News publication of the American Bar Association's Section of Administrative Law, for which he received its exceptional service award in 2014. He also has served as a consultant to the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS) since its official re-establishment in 2010.


Currently Teaching

LAW-700B-001 Govt Inform Law & Policy



Degrees & Universities

J.D., George Washington University 1976
B.A., State University of New York at Stony Brook 1973

[Sancho]

15. Yep..that's the same crackpot....

Maybe we should post OPs supporting Clarence Thomas on DU!!

"a fool that's educated is an educated fool"

[KeepItReal]

13. Someone or some process deleted his Outlook email file (the ".pst")?

If they created an Outlook email account for this dude - and it appears that they did - he would have a .pst file to hold all of his emails (inbox, sent mail, drafts, etc.)

If there's no .pst file for this guy, either A) the Outlook account was never created or B) someone or some process (routine maintenance?) deleted his .pst file from the place on the State network.

Very interesting.