State Dept. reverses FOIA refusal on Keystone XL

After a coalition of environmental groups threatened legal action, the State Department has reversed its decision and decided to comply with a Freedom of Information Act request for email communications between Hillary Clinton and a former campaign official.

Secretary of State Clinton is charged with approving or rejecting a plan to build the Keystone XL pipeline to carry tar sands oil from Alberta, Canada to the U.S. Gulf Coast. But the chief lobbyist for the company that owns that pipeline is Paul Elliott, formerly the Deputy National Campaign Director for her 2008 presidential campaign.

A coalition of groups opposed to the Keystone project submitted a FOIA request for any communications between Clinton’s office and Elliott regarding the pipeline project but the State Department rejected that request. Under threat of a federal lawsuit they would almost certainly have lost, the agency has now reversed itself and will turn over those communication records. The agency sent a letter to those groups last week saying they would start to process the request.

“I hope this move by the State Department is a sign of more transparency to come,” said Alex Moore, dirty fuels campaigner at Friends of the Earth, one of three watchdog groups that filed the FOIA request. “We are still waiting to see if the State Department indeed releases these documents, which will shed important light on whether it is oil lobbyists or the people this pipeline would endanger who truly have the agency’s ear.”