Under Pruitt, EPA Chief of Staff Ryan Jackson created a pilot program to "centralize" FOIA requests that go through the various sub-offices that make up EPA's Office of the Administrator, as revealed by released emails. In internal emails from August 2017 (later turned over to the Natural Resources Defense Council), Jackson and another top Pruitt aide (Liz Bowman, the head of EPA's Office of Public Affairs) complained that career EPA officials had released records in response to a FOIA request from a news organization (E&E News), when such records could have been withheld for several additional weeks. The aides directed that they be notified prior to any release of Pruitt-related material. This approach was criticized by FOIA experts; Nate Jones, director of the FOIA Project at George Washington University's National Security Archive said the process "does look like the most burdensome review process that I've seen documented."