“Greetings from Kabul!” Hillary Clinton wrote to her trusted former aide, Sidney Blumenthal, on the morning of July 7, 2012. “And thanks for keeping this stuff coming!”
The secretary of state’s warm encouragement underscores concerns that members of the House Select Committee on Benghazi have expressed since discovering earlier this month that Blumenthal possessed dozens of previously undisclosed emails in which he and Clinton discussed Libya.
Roughly sixty new emails published by the committee Monday suggest Clinton relied heavily on what lawmakers have called “unvetted intelligence” from Blumenthal in the months before and after the 2012 terror attack in Benghazi. Many of the emails indicate she implored Blumenthal to funnel information about Libya to her, despite her recent claims that her “old friend” Blumenthal simply sent her “unsolicited emails.”
Blumenthal doesn’t name the people who gave him the information in the emails, describing the unidentified individuals with whom he had spoken as “extremely sensitive” or “well-placed” sources but rarely going so far as to indicate why they would be reliable sources of information.
In some cases, the veracity of Blumenthal’s memos has been called into question.
“This strains credulity based on what I know,” Clinton told Blumenthal in March 2012 in response to an intelligence report. “Any other info about it?”
Blumenthal promised he would “seek more intel” about the matter, which involved suggestions that French and British officials were encouraging tribal leaders to set up a “semi-autonomous regime” in Benghazi in order to foster unspecified “business opportunities” in the region.
In the same memo, Blumenthal went on to assure Clinton that his sources “believe that there is also reduced threat from Islamist militias in the East,” where Benghazi is located.
The comment, which was proven false in the ensuing months by an attack on the U.S. consulate in the region by militant Islamists, provides an example of the kind of unreliable information that could have led the State Department astray if it was treated as official intelligence.
“It is significant our top diplomat was directly receiving unvetted intelligence information, which may have come from sources with financial interests in Libya,” said Rep. Trey Gowdy, chairman of the Benghazi committee, of the previously unseen Blumenthal emails.
Blumenthal was working with former CIA operatives, including Tyler Drumheller, from a security firm called Alphom Group, the Washington Examiner reported.
Blumenthal’s additional ties to business in the country remain a mystery.
Speaking to reporters after a closed-door deposition before the select committee Tuesday, Blumenthal described his financial interest in Libya as a “humanitarian-assistance idea for medical care” before downplaying his personal involvement in the venture.
But the new emails provide a window into the conflicts of interest that Blumenthal’s high-level access could have posed, regardless of whether his business “never got off the ground,” as he has claimed.
In a February 1, 2012 email to Clinton, for example, Blumenthal told Clinton the Libyan president “fears that crucial medical supplies and other badly needed daily necessities of life may be used up completely.”
Blumenthal suggested in the same memo that the Libyan president and prime minister needed to work together to “deal with private firms that can provide the medical assistance and basic needs of daily life for the Libyan people” or else “risk the country falling into civil war.”
In another memo, Blumenthal claimed the temporary Libyan government had begun to court private firms to address the country’s “pressing humanitarian needs” because “if they wait for foreign governments to provide this assistance the death toll among the wounded and injured will continue to rise.” He said a source with “excellent access” told him a lack of access to medical care could threaten the temporary government.
Blumenthal’s dire predictions — and his indication that private businesses similar to his own were the best solution to Libya’s problem — raise questions about whether Blumenthal could have used his relationship to Clinton to tip diplomatic policy in his favor.
Other emails shed light on Blumenthal’s efforts to protect Clinton’s image in the aftermath of Benghazi.
In October of 2012, one month after the Benghazi attack, Blumenthal sent Clinton a series of links to posts by Media Matters, the left-wing group for which he also worked at the time, that he said provided “complete refutation on Libya smear.”
“Philippe can circulate these links,” Blumenthal wrote, likely referring to Philippe Reines, Clinton’s spokesman.
Earlier that month, Blumenthal warned Clinton that Karl Rove’s American Crossroads group had produced an attack video criticizing the administration’s Benghazi response.
“Watch this asap,” Blumenthal told the secretary, adding a link to the video.
Blumenthal sent Clinton a barrage of news clips and links that dealt with Mitt Romney’s response to the Benghazi attack in the weeks before the 2012 election.
For example, he flagged a Salon article that he said described “Romney’s latest gambit” and noted that he had “got done and published,” suggesting he may have played a role in the article’s preparation.
The Salon story, written Oct. 1, 2012, relies largely on an unnamed “highly reliable source” that planted the same talking points Blumenthal pushed in other emails to Clinton and through Media Matters.
