Rep. Trey Gowdy is worried that informal memos prepared by Sidney Blumenthal for Hillary Clinton may have contained “unvetted intelligence” based on the number of things Blumenthal got wrong about Libya.
Blumenthal’s predictions about how coalition countries would react, who would play leading roles in the transitional government and even the location of embattled Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi turned out to be incorrect.
Fred Fleitz, vice president for policy and programs at the Center for Security Policy, said the main problem with Clinton’s reliance on Blumenthal for such information was the fact that she sent his memos to top State Department officials without informing them of the source.
“If she’s circulating this as a memo that was authoritative from somewhere, she’s basically misleading people at the department that this is information that was reliable,” Fleitz said.
He said “there’s nothing wrong” with a secretary of state seeking information from friendly faces outside of the agency, as long as the findings are coupled with intelligence from officials who “will tell her things that she doesn’t want to hear.”
“What he was writing, it was obviously written with a political agenda in mind,” Fleitz said of Blumenthal. “You can’t just take [intelligence] from a political operative, especially on a national security issue.”
Clinton’s published email records suggests she relied heavily on Blumenthal to guide her understanding of the Libyan conflict.
Based on Washington Examiner analysis of 179 pages of emails between Clinton and Blumenthal, here are ten examples of things Blumenthal got wrong in Libya.
1. Blumenthal told Clinton on February 21, 2011 that “if [Gaddafi] judges there is no hope he will leave the country.” Gaddafi was discovered eight months later hiding in a drain and was then killed by rebels, long after even the most optimistic observer would have said there was hope for his regime.
2. Also on February 21, Blumenthal described his sources’ view of the conflict as “an escalation of the longstanding rivalry between the government in Tripoli and tribal groups in the east, centered around Benghazi.” The initial uprising has been widely characterized in the years since as a rebellion against Gaddafi, not a tribal clash.
3. That same day, Blumenthal assured Clinton that Gaddafi’s sons felt his regime had the “upper hand” in the government despite the uprising. Less than a week later, an entirely new government was formed in the parts of the county Gaddafi had quickly lost.
4. Blumenthal told Clinton on February 23, 2012 that Gaddafi would retreat to his “fortress” in the southern desert of the country if his regime collapsed, but the dictator was found in the northern coastal region months later following the fall of his regime.
5. Three days after Blumenthal assured Clinton his sources believed the West would be “reluctant to depose a sitting head of state” like Gaddafi, British Prime Minister David Cameron and French President Nikolas Sarkozy called a special meeting to “consider further European Union action,” Agence France Presse reported. A NATO coalition converged on the country within months.
6. When discussing possible future actions toward Libya from the international community, Blumenthal told Clinton that South Africa was unlikely to support a no-fly zone. South Africa voted in favor of the no-fly zone weeks later in the United Nations.
7. On February 26, 2011, Blumenthal said a close Gaddafi confidante, Abdel Salam Jalloud, had defected to the rebel faction. That didn’t actually happen until six months later.
8. Blumenthal relayed his sources’ belief, in March of 2011, that there would be a “complete collapse of the Libyan military command and control structure within the next week.” Gaddafi did not fall until August of that year.
9. Blumenthal said in April 2011 that Gaddafi’s son dispatched the former Libyan foreign minister, Moussa Koussa, to London on behalf of the regime in an attempt to open negotiations with the NATO coalition that could end the military intervention. Koussa was reportedly defecting to the rebels.
10. On March 9, 2011, Blumenthal told Clinton his sources believed the Arab League would not support military intervention against the Gaddafi regime. The Arab League did support the intervention.
