Rep. Trey Gowdy and the House Select Committee on Benghazi are searching for answers about the roughly 60 previously undisclosed emails Hillary Clinton confidante Sidney Blumenthal provided to Congress June 12.
Either the State Department or Hillary Clinton herself withheld the records, according to the South Carolina Republican. The Washington Examiner reviewed 77 Blumenthal emails published by the committee on Monday, including some that are identical to documents released by the State Department in May.
What did we learn?
Benghazi was a big topic of discussion
Forty-two of the 77 emails mentioned Benghazi explicitly, while others described events or trends relevant to the city that served as a rebel stronghold during the 2011 unrest in Libya.
The State Department has raised the possibility that it did not submit the emails to the committee because they were related to Libya, not Benghazi, as the congressional request was worded.
But the fact that more than half of the emails released Monday cite the city by name casts doubt on that particular defense of the agency’s failure to produce the records.
While the State Department has claimed in court filings that it would finish digitizing all of Clinton’s emails by mid-June, the agency has yet to answer Gowdy’s demands that it simply produce copies of the new Blumenthal emails.
Constant contact
The original batch of Benghazi-related emails released by the State Department in May contained months-long gaps during which Clinton and her staff appear to have remained silent on the conflict in Libya.
Blumenthal’s records show he emailed Clinton nearly every day, perhaps several times a day, with updates about Libya from February to April 2011. Those months marked the height of the Arab Spring movement against Gaddafi, during which Benghazi fell to Libyan rebels and the dictator’s forces began to defect en masse to the other side.
During crucial time periods in the Libyan civil war, Blumenthal and Clinton increased the frequency of their contact, suggesting the secretary relied heavily on her former aide to guide her understanding of events as they unfolded.
The batch of Clinton emails published in May painted Blumenthal as an occasionally helpful voice in Clinton’s inner circle when it came to Libya.
Her new emails, provided to the committee by Blumenthal himself, show he served as a constant and influential advisor to Clinton both before and after the Benghazi terror attack.
The Obama administration characterized the push for a military intervention in Libya as a largely humanitarian effort to prevent an impending massacre.
Oil was major concern
The Obama administration characterized the push for a military intervention in Libya as a largely humanitarian effort to prevent an impending massacre.
Any focus on the country’s rich oil deposits — and who would have access to them once Gaddafi was removed — took a backseat to the importance of eliminating an oppressive dictator.
But Blumenthal’s emails suggest oil concessions were a concern behind the scenes at the State Department.
Twenty-eight of the newly-published records discussed the prognosis for Libya’s oil industry, with many more mentioning the effect of violence on business activities in general.
Several companies, including British Petroleum and Exxon Mobil, are mentioned by name. Exxon is a Clinton Foundation donor.
Human rights were less prominent
By contrast, fewer emails mention human rights violations.
While it is well known that Gaddafi’s forces committed atrocities as they struggled to maintain their hold on Libya, just 20 of the 77 emails discuss the specific violence civilians and rebel fighters faced.
The relative lack of discussion about human rights violations by Clinton’s key Libya advisor raises questions about what her priorities were when she advocated for the U.S. to join a NATO coalition in using military force against Gaddafi.
Bush’s Iraq war plans ‘applicable’ to Libya
Broad comparisons to President George W. Bush’s ill-fated foray into Iraq to depose Saddam Hussein and Clinton’s similarly destructive effort to remove Gaddafi have circulated among pundits for years.
Blumenthal made the connection between Bush’s Iraq strategy and Clinton’s in Libya explicit when he encouraged her to employ the same tactic the former president had used against Hussein.
“[A]spects of the Bush war plan for the invasion of Iraq, now verboten for planning or even thinking, might be applicable, in particular shock-and-awe,” Blumenthal wrote to the secretary in March of 2011.
He then argued Gaddafi’s forces could be weakened by an unexpected barrage of airstrikes similar to the ones Bush ordered in Iraq.
Blumenthal’s advice underscores criticisms that Clinton failed to heed the lessons learned by the collapse of civil society in Iraq after the dictator there was removed without a comprehensive plan for the aftermath.
Unreliable intelligence
Gowdy has expressed concerns that the “unvetted intelligence” Blumenthal provided could have contained false information that, if treated as fact by top State Department officials, could have led the agency astray.
Some of Blumenthal’s reports to the secretary appear to have been unreliable.
For example, in March of 2011, Blumenthal relayed his sources’ belief that the Arab League would oppose a no-fly zone over Libya as something Clinton should presumably factor into her calculations on the matter.
The Arab League did support military intervention in Libya and did not, as Blumenthal predicted, continue to back Gaddafi.
In another instance, Blumenthal claimed his sources “believe that there is also reduced threat from Islamist militias in the East,” where the city of Benghazi is located.
The comment was proven false in the ensuing months by an attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi by militant Islamists.
