One of the remarkable things about Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of State is how much worse it keeps getting now, two years after she left office.
This spring, Americans learned that Clinton used a private email system to conduct all official State business, probably violating the law; that Clinton was receiving and sharing advice on Libya from Sid Blumenthal, who at the time had business interests in that country, with top officials; and that foreign and corporate interests were making large donations to the Clinton Foundation and paying Bill Clinton handsomely for speeches at the same time they were lobbying the State Department for favors.
Now comes news that officials at the State Department’s inspector general’s office removed damning passages from an audit that highlighted some major problems within the agency. The audit, published shortly before Clinton left the Obama administration, might have been very embarrassing for Clinton if it had been published in the unexpurgated form that has since emerged.
The Washington Examiner‘s Sarah Westwood reported last week that earlier drafts of the audit, which differ significantly from the final version published by the inspector general in February 2013. As Westwood notes, “The edits raise concerns that investigators were subjected to ‘undue influence’ from agency officials.”
Officials had covered up misconduct by State Department employees and Clinton’s security team. For example, a November 2012 draft stated that inspectors learned that high-level State employees “have prejudiced the commencement, course and outcome of [special investigations division] investigations.”
An early draft also stated that diplomatic security would sometimes “circl[e] the wagons” to protect “favored” personnel or “rising stars from criminal charges or from embarrassing revelations that could harm a promising career.”
In one case, according to the draft, “a Regional Security Officer engaged in serious criminal conduct including sexual abuse of local embassy staff during a series of embassy postings.” In another, a senior diplomatic security official “protected some agents on the Secretary’s Detail from investigations into misbehavior while on official trips.” In still another case, passages were eliminated that suggested that someone in Clinton’s office halted an investigation of an ambassador accused of pedophilia. None of this appeared in the final version of the audit.
Ongoing questions over the independence of the State Department’s inspector general have prompted Senators David Perdue, R-Ga., and Tim Kaine, D-Va., to introduce the Improving Department of State Oversight Act, which would require State Department officials to notify its inspector general of any allegations of misconduct. After all, what’s the point in having an inspector general if he or she doesn’t have the autonomy to investigate possible wrongdoing?
That Hillary presided over State when the whitewashing took place is one example of how her public service there could become a liability for her in the coming presidential election. Scandals aside, it’s not as if Clinton achieved much in her four years at Foggy Bottom. She closed no signature deals, presided over no landmark treaties and introduced no new foreign policy doctrines. Her accomplishments were so small and few in number that when Bloomberg’s Mark Halperin asked a focus group of Iowa Democrats to name one, most were stumped.
When she served as secretary, Clinton’s favorability rating soared, in stark contrast to its downward trajectory since she joined the presidential race. As the campaign wears on, Clinton and her supporters may even begin to downplay her time there.
