A section of a partially redacted FBI document posted on Wikileaks which mentions the "7th Floor Group" as a " Shadow Government

The 7th Floor Group was a deep state milieu made up of US State Department officials who met regularly on the 7th floor of the Harry S. Truman Building in Washington, DC, that was exposed in Autumn 2016.

The FBI mentioned that the group was referred to as The "Shadow Government" inside the State Department, which briefly attracted the attention of commercially-controlled media. The group appears to have formed around Hillary Clinton, who had an office on the 7th floor of the State Deapartment[1] although no direct evidence has yet emerged to tie her to the group. Most if not all remaining members had their employment terminated on 17 February 2017.

Activities

The 7th Floor Group met on Wednesday afternoons and discussed FOIA requests and the congressional record in order to contain particularly sensitive information, and how best to release other information. CNBC reported in October 2016 that the group had "argued for a Clinton document release to be conducted all at once "for coordination purposes" instead of on a rolling basis as would normally be the case".[2]

Censorship of official reports

A 2015 report for The Washington Examiner was entitled "State Department Inspector General officials edited out passages of a high-profile report in [February] 2013 that could have embarrassed Hillary Clinton just days before she quit President Obama's Cabinet." This compared a report published in 2013 with earlier drafts that were provided by whistleblower Richard Higbie. The Examiner states that "The unexplained gaps in the final version, and the removal of passages that would have damaged the State Department, call into question the independence of Harold Geisel, who was State's temporary inspector general throughout Clinton's four years at the head of the department."[3]

One such passage, present in the draft but not in the final report states that "Sources reported that a senior '7th Floor' Department official ordered [diplomatic security] to stop the investigation of an ambassador accused of pedophilia, and another such senior official had [diplomatic security] stop an investigation of an ambassador-designate".

Facilities

The Secretary's suite was a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility which also had a DSS security detachment outside of the office.

Attendance

Meetings were attended by the Secretary of State John Kerry, Deputy Chief of Staff Jennifer Stout, Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources, Kennedy, Assistant Secretary Julia Frifield, and unnamed members of the Office of the Legal Adviser.[4]

Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin are not known to have attended their meetings, but this inference seems highly plausible considering that some names were redacted from the FBI document, Hillary's office was also located on the 7th Floor of the US State Department Headquarters, where she is known to have met with her top advisers, including Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills.[5]Moreover, in 2018, an email to Colin Powell was declassified in which she wrote "Colin, I am finally out of the SCIF and want to thank you for all of the advice about berries, security and life on the 7th floor! I hope we'll have a chance to visit in person sometime soon. All the best, H"[6]

Exposure

New York Post report on the group after the initial FBI document was published on 17 October 2016 Thereport on the group after the initial FBI document was published on 17 October 2016

The group was first exposed on 17 October 2016 by a reference in an FBI investigation report arising from the Hillary Clinton email controversy. Interest has been heightened by the fact that FBI documents refer to it as a "shadow government" inside the US State Department.[7] By November 2016, another suspected reference to the group was in the public record, an email on Wikileaks by Roberta S. Jacobson to her "7th floor colleagues."[8]

Peter Strzok's SMS

On 7 February 2018 the US Senate released a set of (redacted) SMSs between Peter Strzok and "his alleged mistress Lisa Page".[9] One from 28 July 2016 reads: " This article highlights the thing I mentioned to you earlier, asking if Bill had noted it to 7th floor. I'm going to send it to him ".[10] Strzok had previously referred to a "'secret society' of folks within the Department of Justice and the FBI".[11]

A third and earlier reference was in a 2013 NBC-article[12], but this time it was on the 7th floor of the CIA headquarters, and seems to refer to “the Sisterhood,” a powerful band of female CIA-leaders: Avril Haines, Fran Moore, Sue Gordon and many others "some of which are classified".

Cover-up

After the 17 October 2016 publication of the FBI report, a Wikipedia user created a page on the group, but it was speedily deleted on 8 November 2016, after a vote yielded 9 votes to 'Delete' and 1 (anonymous) one to 'Keep'.[13] In spite of the FBI document in which it is termed a "shadow government", the 7th floor group was deemed a "non-notable conspiracy theory" with a "lack of reliable secondary sources".[14] Although as a corporate controlled media outlet, CNBC is deemed reliable, their breaking of the story[15] was treated as a primary source, since a Wikipedia rule states that "All breaking news stories, without exception, are primary sources..."[14] i.e. Since corporate media only ran one story on this topic, it is not suitable for Wikipedia. By March 2017, the FBI report had been removed[16], but as of February 2018 it was still on the Internet Archive.[17]

Purge

The group appears to have been disbanded by Donald Trump's administration. On 17 February 2017, CBS reported that "Much of seventh-floor staff, who work for the Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources and the Counselor offices, were told today that their services were no longer needed."[18]





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