The State Department’s processing of records for public release under the federal government’s best-known transparency law—the Freedom of Information Act—has ground to a virtual halt due to work changes aimed at quelling the coronavirus pandemic, according to an agency official.

State Department official Eric Stein said in a formal court declaration this week that the unusual system the agency relies upon for line-by-line review of requested documents has been hit hard by the shift to telework as a means of reducing the number of people in federal offices.


Unlike most federal agencies, State taps retired employees—in its case, retired Foreign Service officers—to handle the painstaking task. The cadre of workers bring a familiarity with the agency and the clearances needed to handle classified information, but are also older and “very few” were set up to telework prior to the viral outbreak, Stein said.

“We currently estimate that there is a 96% reduction in ability to process FOIA requests as a result of the unavailability of REAs,” wrote Stein, using State’s shorthand for “retired annuitants.”

Stein said he ordered the retired employees to stay out of the office for “several weeks” because the FOIA work wasn’t considered mission critical, but he also expressed concerns for their health due to their age. “Many of them are within the age groups identified by the CDC as being at higher risk for serious illness from COVID-19,” he wrote.

Stein’s declaration was submitted to federal judges in Washington this week handling at least seven FOIA lawsuits filed by groups and individuals at different points on the political spectrum.


They include cases where conservative journalist John Solomon is seeking records about a U.S. ambassador to Ukraine fired by President Donald Trump, Marie Yovanovitch, where the conservative group Citizens United is demanding information about former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s appointments, and where the liberal organization Campaign for Accountability is seeking information on the Trump administration’s interactions with anti-abortion groups.

Stein’s eight-page statement was aimed at persuading judges handling the suits to put off looming deadlines for 60 days. Judges have approved several of the requests, with plaintiffs putting up little or no resistance.

Some other agencies have suspended all FOIA processing as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak. The FBI has notified courts that it sent virtually all its staff handling such requests home 10 days ago. They are tentatively scheduled to return on Monday, but it’s unclear whether that will happen.

The FBI has said telework isn’t practical for their FOIA reviewers because they all use a classified system and staff can’t access it from their homes.


Stein said State is in the process of migrating to a new system that would allow reviewers to process unclassified records at home, but the vast majority of the retired diplomats are not now set up to do that. He said he’s trying to expedite that capability, but faces several hurdles in doing so.

“Very few REAs are telework ready,” Stein wrote. “Most do not have current, approved telework agreements, do not have the technological capability to telework, or have chosen not to telework. REAs cannot be compelled to telework.”

State’s FOIA system has struggled for years with massive backlogs and delays. It was thrown into a tailspin in 2015 by demands for urgent processing of tens of thousands of emails Clinton exchanged on a private server and later provided to the department at its request.

State brought in waves of additional help to try to work through the intimidating pile of records awaiting processing. In 2017, Trump administration officials began involuntarily transferring some personnel to work on FOIA review in a so-called “surge” that provoked the ire of some veteran diplomats.

Despite that effort, the number of backlogged requests at State has continued to grow. At the end of fiscal 2019, there were 11,106 beyond the legally required response deadline, up from 10,400 the previous year, according to a recent report.