Finally! Watchdog Learns Who Worked for John Kerry’s Shady Climate Office

PPT and others worked for years to get basic information about Kerry’s State Department group.

“Transparency is for suckers.” John Kerry may not have actually said those words, but just about everything his Office of the Special Presidential Envoy for Climate (SPEC) in the Biden administration did pretty much screamed it. Kerry’s little kingdom inside the State Department was highly secretive, even as it was supposed to be representing the interests of the American public abroad.

Today, after years of Freedom of Information Act requests and lawsuits, Protect the Public’s Trust (PPT) has finally received an almost complete roster of Kerry’s office (some names are redacted because it wouldn’t involve Kerry if it were complete).

In April 2024, the public learned the SPEC office was paying $4.3 million in salary to about 30 staffers, and that the median income of people in the office was around $170,000 per year. Kerry’s budget was $16.7 million, and he reported directly to President Biden.

Secrecy and obfuscation were the hallmarks of Kerry’s high-flying position and the office under it. In 2022, in response to a FOIA request, PPT was told none of the office’s documents would be available until November of 2024 – after the presidential election.

In June 2023, PPT submitted a FOIA request with the Department of State and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy seeking to learn the basis for a claim Kerry made overseas at an international conference on climate and agriculture. In a speech, Kerry said greenhouse gases kill 15 million people each year. The FOIA response said they had no records to back up the claim.

Congressional leaders also requested information about the nature of his negotiations with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in February 2023. In April 2023 the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability again called out Kerry’s office for failing to respond to their information requests.

Emails obtained by PPT in 2024 show that Kerry’s office coordinated closely with environmental special interest groups in 2021, including the Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth, on issues “the U.S. government needs to address internationally” including “shutting down coal.”

All this, and Kerry reported directly to the executive of the “most ethical and transparent administration in history.” Yet it took a change in administration for this new information to be revealed.

“John Kerry must have been absent when his civics teacher explained how a democratic republic works, as his almost clandestine office inside the State Department shows,” PPT Director Michael Chamberlain said. “He was jetting around meeting with dictators and spreading unsubstantiated information while he expected the taxpayers to write checks to his office for millions in exchange for … well, we don’t really know. And it’s only now we’re learning for whom. Thankfully, the Trump administration’s State Department seems to be embracing transparency much more than their predecessors.”

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