State Department details hiring spree linked to Hillary Clinton email FOIA crush

By Josh Gerstein, POLITICO, Oct. 14, 2015

The State Department has offered positions to about half of the 50 personnel Secretary of State John Kerry has promised to hire for the swamped agency office that handles Freedom of Information Act request, but only three staffers have been formally transferred thus far, according to a new court filing.

The submission Tuesday night said the request for help last month drew 84 applications and resulted in 23 offers, all but one of which were accepted.

However, of the three employees who started recently, only one is actually reviewing FOIA requests. The other two were sent to work on Congressional document production "with the intent that they will free two more experienced reviewers to move to the...FOIA Litigation and Appeals Branch once the new hires are trained," State official John Hackett wrote in the declaration filed in U.S. District Court (and posted here.)

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