Another batch of State Department emails have revealed more instances of Hillary Clinton’s staff trading press access for favorable media coverage.
A series of email exchanges between former Clinton spokesman Philippe Reines and former Atlantic contributing editor Mark Ambinder show that the State Department appeared to have success in dictating the terms of certain journalist’s reporting.
The contents of the Ambinder emails were first reported this week by Gawker, which obtained the notes by filing a Freedom of Information Act request in 2012.
“In them, you can see Reines ‘blackmailing’ Ambinder into describing a Clinton speech as ‘muscular’ in exchange for early access to the transcript. In other words, Ambinder outsourced his editorial judgment about the speech to a member of Clinton’s own staff,” Gawker’s J.K. Trotter reported.
“On the morning of July 15, 2009, Ambinder sent Reines a blank email with the subject line, ‘Do you have a copy of HRC’s speech to share?’ His question concerned a speech Clinton planned to give later that day at the Washington, D.C. office of the Council on Foreign Relations, an influential think tank. Three minutes after Ambinder’s initial email, Reines replied with three words: “on two conditions.” Later Reines emailed, “3 actually.”
Ambinder responded with “ok,” and Clinton’s former State Department spokesman got to work dictating his conditions.
First, Reines wrote that when describing Clinton’s remarks, the reporter must, “in your own voice describe them as ‘muscular.'”
Second, he added, “You note that a look at the [Council on Foreign Relations] seating plan shows that all the envoys — from [envoys Richard Holbrooke and George Mitchell, and National Security Council senior director Dennis Ross] — will be arrayed in front of her, which in your own clever way you can say certainly not a coincidence and meant to convey something.”
Lastly, Reines demanded, “You don’t say you were blackmailed!”
Ambinder responded with a simple, “got it.”
Later that day, in an Atlantic article titled “Hillary Clinton’s ‘Smart Power’ Breaks Through,” Ambinder’s story complied with every one of Reine’s conditions, from the use of the word “muscular” to an emphasis being placed on the event’s seating arrangements.
The State emails suggesting a quid pro quo between Ambinder and Reines are not the only questionable correspondences between the two men. Several additional emails obtained by Gawker show the former editor emailing Reines occasionally to heap praise on Clinton for things including television appearances and press briefings.
Asked for comment, Ambinder stressed that he was acting on his own and that his emails did not reflect the editorial standards of the Atlantic.
“Philippe and I generally spoke on the phone and followed up by email. The exchange is probably at best an incomplete record of what went down. That said, the transactional nature of such interactions always gave me the willies. … Since I can’t remember the exact exchange I can’t really muster up a defense of the art, and frankly, I don’t really want to,” he told Gawker in an email. “I will say this: whatever happened here reflects my own decisions, and no one else’s.”
The revelation comes not long after Gawker revealed that Politico’s Mike Allen had allowed Reines to ghost-write a State Department-related item in his morning Playbook newsletter, and that he had tried in 2013 to leverage access to the former first family by offering to give Chelsea Clinton a softball interview.
On the day of Ambinder’s back-and-forth with the former State spokesman, Allen authored a report that also referred to Clinton’s speech as “muscular.” The Politico report was also careful to note the Council of Foreign relations seating arrangement.
