A collection of Hillary Clinton’s emails that were leaked to the New York Times and published by the paper Thursday give unique insight into what the State Department decided to withhold from the public when it released the same records one day later.
Marie Harf, State Department spokesperson, denied that the leak could have originated from her agency and suggested the documents would “look different” if the Times had obtained them from the House Select Committee on Benghazi, although she would not say whether the committee provided the emails.
The congressional committee has had possession of the minimally-redacted version of the documents since February, the State Department said in a statement via Twitter Friday morning.
Nearly 350 pages of emails released unofficially by the media outlet Thursday dealt almost exclusively with correspondence between Clinton and Sidney Blumenthal, an unofficial adviser whose potential employment at the State Department was blocked by the Obama administration in 2009.
Blumenthal sent Clinton a series of intelligence memos regarding the security situation in Libya for a nearly two-year period before the Benghazi attack.
The lack of additional sources of Libyan intelligence in Clinton’s cache of emails suggests one of two things: either the emails published Thursday and Friday are a fraction of the total record, or Clinton relied heavily — if not totally — on Blumenthal’s reports to drive her fact-finding on a country in chaos.
In a March 27, 2011 memo to Clinton, Blumenthal mentioned that French President Nikolas Sarkozy had asked sociologist Bernard Henri Levy to use his “long established ties to Israel, Syria, and other nations in the Middle East” to gauge the level of influence Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups wielded in the Libyan government.
Levy’s name was redacted from the State Department emails.
His name surfaced in the documents more than a year later, however. Clinton requested a copy of a documentary he had made, The Oak of Tobruk, on September 11, 2012, just hours before the Benghazi attack.
Levy had directed the movie, which featured a cameo from Clinton herself, and Harvey Weinstein later purchased the rights.
On April 8, 2011, Clinton forwarded a Blumenthal memo to Jake Sullivan, her deputy chief of staff, that alleged “UK game playing” involving its interference with both the Qaddafi regime and Libyan rebels.
“The idea of using private security experts to arm the opposition should be considered,” Clinton wrote in the leaked emails in a suggestion that was redacted from the State Department release.
A State Department-screened email sent January 9, 2012 by Gene Cretz, Ambassador Chris Stevens’ immediate predecessor in Libya, ascribed to a redacted source intelligence that an “unholy alliance” between Gaddafi loyalists and escaped criminals was “terrorizing the cities by night and engaging in human trafficking, drugs, gunrunning and alcohol backed by old regime money.”
The leaked emails show Cretz had gotten that information from the U.K. ambassador.
Those documents contain a passage that was blacked out of the State Department emails.
“As for Hiftar he appears to be loved and hated in equal measure and has supporters and detractors,” Cretz wrote. “What is clear is he believed he was COS but did not get the top job because he is so controversial. Magush appears to have gotten the position as a compromise candidate (much like everyone else here).”
Hiftar was a leading Libyan general on the side that overthrew Gaddafi in the 2011 civil war.
Cretz’s take on yet another Blumenthal memo was redacted from an email he sent Sullivan and Jeffrey Feltman, another top Clinton staffer, in the early morning of January 24, 2012.
“I think that the events in Benghazi really shook Jalil and he of course would place the blame on the al-Keeb government,” Cretz wrote. “But it is a bit disingenuous for Jalil, who has been interfering in the al-Keeb government’s business since day one and continues to do so, to think that he does not bear some responsibility as well.”
al-Keeb was the interim prime minister of Libya during the transition from the Gaddafi regime. Jalil was head of the National Transitional Council during the same time period. That position made him the de facto head of state.
The State Department redacted a portion of an email Chris Stevens sent Sullivan, Feltman and Cretz April 3, 2012 in response to a Blumenthal report.
Stevens described a chance encounter with the agency’s “insightful” Libyan political FSN in Benghazi April 2 in which the two discussed the upcoming elections in the country. The identity of who Stevens met with that day was redacted from the official release.
October 1, 2012, in response to a link to a Salon article that suggested the GOP was planning to exploit Benghazi in order to weaken Obama’s presidential campaign, sent to her by Blumenthal, Clinton told Sullivan to “be sure Ben knows they need to be ready for this line of attack.”
Clinton could have been referring to Ben Rhodes, the White House’s deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, who helped shape Susan Rice’s widely criticized response to the attacks in television interviews days after the attack.
The secretary’s warning to White House officials of how to handle political attacks regarding the presidential campaign was redacted from the State Department version of the email under a Freedom of Information Act exemption that protects internal deliberations.
Emails sent among Clinton aides March 29, 2011, discuss a “mystery Libyan visitor” that was complicating matters for the State Department officials when he or she arrived that day.
An individual named Geoffrey Adams was to keep them informed of the situation and requested to send a Clinton aide a “secure message” to explain. Adams’ identity was redacted from the State Department documents.
The State Department redacted parts of a conversation between Mills and Cretz from October 14-16, 2011, in which then-Ambassador Cretz expressed his interest in taking a different chief of mission position and allowing Stevens to “switch” with him.
Cretz told top Clinton aides he “would love to serve as COM in another position if the timing proved right” and assured Mills he would still value his time at the agency under Clinton “if that in fact does not pan out.”
Mills told him she would “keep in mind your willingness to serve in another COM.”
The exchange was redacted from the official release.
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