# ATRS Staff Emails (FOIA Response 6-18-25) A production of approximately 186 pages of emails from Arkansas Teacher Retirement System staff, plus one spreadsheet attachment. The materials cover the period from 10/23/2024 through 6/5/2025, beginning with the State Auditor's office initiating contact between the Development Corporation for Israel and ATRS, and ending with the FOIA-driven release of records about the 6/2/2025 Board action authorizing up to $50 million in Israel Bonds purchases. The production contains six files. Emails1.pdf (42 pages) carries the original 10/23/2024 outreach from the Auditor's Chief Deputy Jason Brady proposing meetings between Auditor Dennis Milligan, Lawrence Berman of DCI, ATRS executive director Mark White, and APERS executive director Amy Fecher. The same PDF holds the December 2024 FOIA exchange with Badria Mryyan, in which White first declines to confirm Israel Bond holdings and then, after Mryyan presses specifically, discovers that ATRS holds Israel sovereign bonds indirectly through a State Street index fund. Emails2.pdf (36 pages) contains the DCI promotional email pipeline that ran from late December 2024 through mid-February 2025, including invitations to a January 15 briefing featuring Israel's Accountant General Yali Rothenberg and a February 2025 economic summary distributed by DCI Vice President Stuart Garawitz. Emails3.pdf (39 pages) carries the operational sequence that produced the eventual board vote: confirmation of the 4/15/2025 in-person meeting at the State Capitol with Berman and Brad Young, Mark White's 5/8/2025 directive to investment officer Rod Graves to prepare a June board proposal already structured as $50 million laddered over five years, the engagement of Aon as consultant, the May press inquiries from Mike Wickline of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, the 5/22/2025 Board preview message in which White recommends the investment, and the 5/28/2025 Aon forward of an offer from Reams Asset Management to manage the mandate. Emails4.pdf (38 pages) contains post-vote press inquiries from Gar Chung of FIN Daily and Google Alerts and FIN Daily newsletter clippings, with most of the newsletter pages rendering as image-only scans without recoverable text. Emails5.pdf (31 pages) holds the immediate post-vote correspondence, including the retrieval of signed Resolution 2025-22, finance staff questions about the timeline for opening the Reams account, and the 6/3/2025 FOIA from Arkansas citizen Jennifer Lenow that produced the BoardDocuments, SignedResolution, and OtherDocuments PDF package on 6/4. Email1Attachment.xlsx is the State Street Global Advisors holdings export for the U.S. Aggregate Bond Index NL Fund (CMX6) as of 11/30/2024, attached to White's response to Mryyan; it documents fourteen State of Israel sovereign CUSIPs and one AID-Israel bond inside the fund. ## Threads in this production The first thread is the origination chain. Brady's 10/23/2024 email frames the request: the Auditor wants meetings for "Larry" with both pension systems' executive directors. The thread loops in Auditor Milligan, Wendy Spadoni from the Auditor's office, Fecher, and White. Both directors agree to meet. The second thread is the December 2024 Mryyan FOIA. Mryyan submits a broadly worded request for ATRS records about Israel investments since 8/1/2017. White denies as too vague but voluntarily provides a list of direct Israel-based equity holdings. Mryyan presses specifically for Israel Bonds issued by DCI. White responds that ATRS has no direct Israel Bonds investments. After a phone call on 12/11/2024, White asks Graves to check the pooled funds. Graves identifies the SSgA CMX6 bond index fund and produces the holdings export as the responsive document. The third thread is the DCI promotional pipeline running December 2024 through February 2025. Ethan Behling of DCI cold-emails [email protected] and [email protected] repeatedly with invitations to the 1/15/2025 Rothenberg briefing. In February 2025 Stuart Garawitz distributes the "State of Israel Economic Summary" PowerPoint, a seven-page DCI-branded presentation with charts on debt-to-GDP, GDP growth, capital markets, and high-tech investment, and the assertion that Israel Bonds has "raised more than $4 billion globally since the war started on Oct. 7." The fourth thread is the April 2025 in-person meeting. Milligan emails White on 4/11/2025 confirming the 4/15/2025 meeting in his Capitol office with Berman and Brad Young of DCI. Bios for both are attached. Berman's bio asserts that he is "directly responsible for selling 60 new pension and treasury funds totaling more than $10 billion." The fifth thread is the May 2025 internal preparation. White emails Graves on 5/8/2025 with a fully formed investment structure: up to $50 million total, no more than $20 million in the first year, no more than $15 million in subsequent years, possibly through Investment Policy change or by resolution. Graves contacts Aon's PJ Kelly and Katie Comstock the next day to schedule the June agenda item. Aon discreetly explores managers and on 5/28 forwards an offer from Reams Asset Management at a 3 basis point fee, with PJ Kelly's note that Reams is "light on experience with Israel bonds." The sixth thread is the May 2025 press inquiries. Mike Wickline of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette emails White on 5/14/2025 asking about Israeli-related investments while covering APERS. White confirms ATRS owns Israeli bonds indirectly through an index fund and that direct holdings are in equity and fixed income in Israeli companies. Graves provides the figures: approximately $19 million direct, approximately $5 million indirect through passive global index funds, approximately $1 million of which is the SSgA Israel sovereigns slice, against a total portfolio of approximately $22.4 billion. White's 5/22/2025 Board preview email then frames Milligan as "Our Board colleague" requesting consideration of the investment, recommends $50 million over five years, and writes that "from a pecuniary standpoint, it appears to me these bonds are a worthy investment." The seventh thread is the post-vote FOIA response. The Board approved Resolution 2025-22 on 6/2/2025. Within hours, news outlets covered the action. Citizen Jennifer Lenow filed a 6/3/2025 FOIA requesting the audio recording, minutes, and all Israel Bonds documents. White produced three PDFs (BoardDocuments, SignedResolution, OtherDocuments) and a Google Drive audio link on 6/4. Reporter Gar Chung of FIN Daily inquired why the board approved and how the mandate would be funded; Graves replied that funding would come from cash flows against asset allocation targets. White forwarded Lenow's FOIA to APERS executive director Amy Fecher with "FYI"; Fecher acknowledged she had received the parallel APERS request the previous week. ## Documents of note The 4/11/2025 Milligan email attaches biographies of Lawrence Berman (60.8 KB DOCX) and Brad Young (670 KB DOCX). Berman's bio is the most quantitatively explicit DCI institutional sales record in this batch: 28 years as National Managing Director, sales to "200 Banks, 115 state and municipal pension and treasury funds, and 50 insurance companies," totaling more than $25 billion across more than 500 customers, with Berman personally responsible for $10 billion in 60 new pension and treasury funds. The 2/11/2025 "State of Israel Economic Summary" PowerPoint sent under Garawitz's name (from Tyler Lee's account) is a seven-page DCI marketing piece. It cites Yali Rothenberg's quoted assessment that "2025 is predicted to be the rebound year from the war" and asserts $4 billion in global Israel Bonds sales since 10/7/2023. The SSgA CMX6 holdings export is the only attachment in this production with independent sovereign-debt portfolio detail. It is the basis for the pre-existing-indirect-exposure analysis covered in [[atrs-pre-existing-indirect-exposure]] and is summarized in its own source page at [[ssga-cmx6-2024-11-30]]. The 6/4/2025 reply to Lenow attaches three PDFs and a Google Drive folder: BoardDocuments.pdf (3.7 MB), SignedResolution.pdf (648 KB) labeled "Isreal Bonds Resolutions.pdf" in Tammy Porter's filename, and OtherDocuments.pdf (4.6 MB). None of these three packages is in this batch. They are documented as follow-up FOIA targets. ## What this production does not contain The 6/2/2025 Board meeting audio recording is not in this batch; the Lenow FOIA response references a Google Drive link. The 6/2/2025 Board meeting minutes are not in this batch; White noted on 6/3 that minutes had not yet been prepared. The BoardDocuments, SignedResolution, and OtherDocuments PDFs that White transmitted to Lenow on 6/4 are not in this batch. These would include the materials Aon presented to the Board, the executed text of Resolution 2025-22, and other internal records. They are likely the most evidentiarily dense missing documents. The Berman and Young DOCX bios attached to the 4/11/2025 Milligan email are present in extracted text form within Emails3.pdf but are not attached as separate DOCX files in this production. The Aon presentation materials referenced by White on 5/8/2025 ("I would like to have some information from them as to the characteristics, performance, and risk profile of these bonds") are not in this batch. No independent credit analysis of Israel sovereign debt is in this batch. White's 5/8 directive explicitly states Aon will not be making "a formal recommendation." No Investment Policy change document or resolution text is in this batch beyond the filename reference. No record of a Knight dissenting vote is in this batch; the Board action is reported only as "All investment related items were approved as presented" by Graves to Chung on 6/3. ## Evidence > "As you both know, the Auditor in his time as treasurer of state requested the legislature to pass legislation that would allow the state or at least the treasurer of state to invest in Israel bonds." > Jason Brady to Amy Fecher and Mark White, Emails1.pdf p.1, 10/23/2024 > "your meetings are Larry's priority" > Jason Brady, Emails1.pdf p.1, 10/23/2024 > "I'm aware of the Israel bonds issued by the Development Corporation for Israel, and no, we do not have any direct investment in those bonds." > Mark White to Badria Mryyan, Emails1.pdf p.11, 12/10/2024 > "Direct holdings total around $19 million as of 5/14/25. We also have an estimated $5 million invested in Israel through our passive global index funds." > Rod Graves to Mark White, Emails3.pdf p.9, 5/15/2025 > "Let's go ahead and plan to move forward with a proposal to the Board in June." > Mark White to Rod Graves, Emails3.pdf p.6, 5/8/2025 > "I know they will not be making a formal recommendation, but I would like to have some information from them as to the characteristics, performance, and risk profile of these bonds, and to the extent they will do so, some assurance that this is a worthwhile investment." > Mark White to Rod Graves, Emails3.pdf p.6, 5/8/2025 > "Our Board colleague, State Auditor Dennis Milligan, is asking the Board to consider making an investment in Israel Bonds." > Mark White Board preview, Emails3.pdf p.28, 5/22/2025 > "From a pecuniary standpoint, it appears to me these bonds are a worthy investment." > Mark White Board preview, Emails3.pdf p.28, 5/22/2025 > "FYI - a compelling offer from Reams from a few perspective but they are light on experience with Israel bonds but have non-US bond experience and resources." > PJ Kelly to Rod Graves, Emails3.pdf p.31, 5/28/2025 > "All investment related items were approved as presented." > Rod Graves to Gar Chung, Emails4.pdf p.1, 6/3/2025 > "I expect the mandate to be funded through cash flows based on actual values compared to target asset allocation targets at the time of funding." > Rod Graves to Mark White, Emails4.pdf p.3, 6/3/2025 ## Cross-References [[ssga-cmx6-2024-11-30]] companion source page for the xlsx attachment [[jason-brady]] [[dennis-milligan]] [[mark-white]] [[rod-graves]] [[lawrence-berman]] [[brad-young]] [[ethan-behling]] [[stuart-garawitz]] [[yali-rothenberg]] [[pj-kelly]] [[matt-waz]] entity pages drawn from this batch [[reams-asset-management]] selected manager [[badria-mryyan]] [[mike-wickline]] [[john-rollans]] [[gar-chung]] [[jennifer-lenow]] external requesters with substantive interactions [[independent-credit-analysis-gap]] [[auditor-as-dci-channel]] [[atrs-pre-existing-indirect-exposure]] [[board-colleague-conflict]] [[dci-promotional-pipeline]] [[atrs-resolution-2025-22]] [[pecuniary-frame-act-498]] concept pages developed from this batch