Hillary emails — Her Benghazi Problem just got worse
Small window opens on Hillary’s emails, and the view isn’t good, particularly of Benghazi.
The New York Times has extensive reporting on the first partial batch of Hillary emails released to the public regarding Libya.
This is only the first batch, and of course, we don’t know what was deleted from her private server.
The bottom line is that the relationship with Sidney Blumenthal is as suspicious as suspected, Hillary knew the video story was a crock, and most of all, the entirety so far demonstrates why Hillary sought to hide her activities for so long.
First Batch of Hillary Clinton Emails Captures Concerns Over Libya:
The Times obtained about a third of the 850 pages of emails. They appear to back up Mrs. Clinton’s previous assertions that she did not receive classified information at her private email address.
But some of the emails contain what the government calls “sensitive” information or “SBU’’ — sensitive but unclassified. This includes details of the whereabouts of State Department officials in Libya when security there was deteriorating during the 2011 revolution. One email from a year and a half before the attacks that was marked sensitive but unclassified contained the whereabouts of Mr. Stevens as he considered leaving Benghazi during the uprising against the Qaddafi regime because of the deteriorating security.
That’s of great interest, because foreign hacking of the home server has been a huge concern, and not just from foreign governments. How did al Quada affiliates know where Ambassador Chris Stevens would be? At least on the date of the above email they could have obtained the information from Hillary’s emails.
Gizmodo, part of the Gawker Media group, has a caustic take on Hillary’s security lapses:
Below you’ll find 349 pages from presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s old inbox, pages that were stored on a private server at her home in New York. (The State Department plans on releasing about 850 total pages of email from Clinton’s servers.) Clinton says she didn’t want to use her official State Department email address because she didn’t want to fumble with more than one device. That’s bullshit.
But anyways, about these emails. The only thing you really need to know is that Clinton did communicate “sensitive but unclassified” information over her homebrew email system. That’s not as bad as sending classified or top secret information over a system of questionable security, but it does support the argument that this email boondoggle is a political nightmare.
That same Times article reports perhaps a more startling revelation — Hillary knew from day one that blaming the attack on a video was bogus — but does anyone remember her saying so publicly as the Obama administration spun the video motive?
The emails also show that Mrs. Clinton was circulating information about the attacks in Benghazi that contradicted the Obama administration’s initial narrative of what occurred, and that she was concerned about how Republicans could use the incidents to undermine President Obama.
The Times has a separate article on the Sidney Blumenthal relationship and influence peddling, A Closer Look at Hillary Clinton’s Emails on Benghazi:
Blumenthal Memos Were Often Circulated Without Identifying Their Source
From 2011 to 2012, Sidney Blumenthal, a longtime friend and confidant who was a senior adviser to Mrs. Clinton during her 2008 presidential campaign, sent her at least 25 memos about Libya, including several about the Benghazi attacks. Mrs. Clinton forwarded most of them to Jake Sullivan, her trusted foreign policy adviser. Mr. Sullivan would then send the memos along to other senior State Department officials, asking for their feedback. There is no evidence those officials were told that the memos were from Mr. Blumenthal. In April 2012, J. Christopher Stevens, the ambassador who died in the Benghazi attacks, was asked by Mr. Sullivan to provide his thoughts on the latest information “from HRC friend.” (Pages 127-128) Brian Fallon, a spokesman for Mrs. Clinton, said that Mr. Blumenthal had not been working for the government in any official capacity at the time and that his emails to Mrs. Clinton had not been solicited.
Blumenthal initially pushed the movie motive, but quickly revealed from his sources that it was an organized attack, contradicting the Obama administration and campaign public relations strategy:
In Memo, Blumenthal Initially Blames Demonstrators for Attacks
The day after the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks on American outposts in Benghazi that killed Mr. Stevens and three other Americans, Mr. Blumenthal sent Mrs. Clinton a memo with his intelligence about what had occurred. The memo said the attacks were by “demonstrators” who “were inspired by what many devout Libyan viewed as a sacrilegious internet video on the prophet Mohammed originating in America.” Mrs. Clinton forwarded the memo to Mr. Sullivan, saying “More info.” (Pages 193-195)
Second Memo Provides Detailed Account of Benghazi
The next day, Mr. Blumenthal sent Mrs. Clinton a more thorough account of what had occurred. Citing “sensitive sources” in Libya, the memo provided extensive detail about the episode, saying that the siege had been set off by members of Ansar al-Shariah, the Libyan terrorist group. Those militants had ties to Al Qaeda, had planned the attacks for a month and had used a nearby protest as cover for the siege, the memo said. “We should get this around asap” Mrs. Clinton said in an email to Mr. Sullivan. “Will do,” he responded. That information contradicted the Obama administration’s narrative at the time about what had spawned the attacks. Republicans have said the administration misled the country about the attacks because it did not want to undermine the notion that President Obama, who was up for re-election, was winning the war on terrorism. (Pages 200-203)
Ed Morrissey has a big picture take on the significance:
Knowing this, the decision by Hillary to send Susan Rice to do the full Ginsburg on September 16th with those phony talking points looks a lot more understandable. As Secretary of State, that task should have fallen to Hillary Clinton, not the then-UN Ambassador, who was out of the loop. Rice, however, wasn’t planning on running for President in 2016. With Blumenthal’s e-mail in on the 13th (and the DIA’s corroboration later), Hillary would have known better than to get stuck on video telling the whoppers that Rice ended up delivering on Obama’s behalf.
What else may be coming out of the e-mails? They’re looking a lot more interesting than we might have suspected.
Social media is just starting the vetting process, not just of the emails but of The Times reporting as well:
Gee, maybe that's because #Hillary & her staff DELETED any emails that'd prove otherwise??
http://t.co/sh8PBNytaA pic.twitter.com/tw5SFUO9pg
— justturnright (@justturnright) May 21, 2015
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Comments
It’s beyond ludicrous for the NY Times to report that the e-mails “back up” Hillary Clinton’s claim that she didn’t receive classified information on her homebrew server. Hillary and her crew are the people who decided which e-mails get released in the first place, and so far they’ve only released a portion of even those hand-picked e-mails — yet the Times is already exonerating her. They are such a bunch of corrupt hacks, they make Stephanopolous look ethical.
As the emails are release and contain no evidence of her corruption, incompetence and lies she and her campaign will be able to lie: “See there is nothing in her emails!”
Just a side comment: Why does everyone believe that the emails on the illegal home server have been deleted? We only have her word for it, after all, and that’s worthless.
More importantly, how can she possibly use those emails to blackmail people if they no longer exist? I personally find it much more likely that there was only a show of deleting emails on the server, while the backups were left untouched.
Heh… It only takes a few minutes to swap out the hard drives so the server is probably squeaky clean and the drives are keeping company with the fish somewhere…
Shee never said she deleted her only copies – just taht they were deleted from that server.
And these are just some of the ones she didn’t delete.
Who slapped SBU “Sensitive But Unclassified” classifications on these emails? If it’s Hillary’s team (way after the fact). they are not responsible for classifying these documents. If Hillary is saying that 100% of her communications at Dept of State were SBU, then she should have stepped down. She’s suggesting she had nothing classified to add to any discussions. How could she comment on any classified information? Her opinions on future US foreign policy were classified by their very nature. Unless she was a worthless Sec State with ZERO to add. Maybe she needs to fess up on this.
Other than her saying so, how do we know that Hillary didn’t send or receive classified information on her home brew server?
Classified or not, an inadequately secure email server would be a gold mine of data for intelligence agents of foreign governments, political opponents, hack-n-sellers, etc., and could easily get Hillary in a blackmail jam as well.
This story is at the ‘tip of the iceberg’ stage and moving forward.
Gosh, I feel bad for the Clintons and their supporters.
Henry, you forgot to add that Clinton can only control the existence of emails sent or received through her server. Those emails went out to a lot of other servers all over the world and there is no telling who is sitting on what out there. This state of threat existed while she was Secretary of State.
Of course she received classified information at her several private email addresses, but those emails were deleted by her.
The question now is how many classified emails she sent out, because the records of those sit in servers, likely all over the world, over which she has zero deletion power. How many are being sat on for later use by US political enemies? Has anyone tried to blackmail her, thereby compromising the entire State Dept. when she was Secretary?
Scary as hell how cavalierly these morons disregard national security when personal interests are at stake.
Money = Power / Power = Money / Country = My Bitch
The scum is oozing…
If I were Vlad Putin or similar evil genius, I would already have, very quietly, told Ms. Clinton that I own her. You see, my secret intel service has a hacked copy of her server emails and contents. We have the logs, do-files, etc, and we’ll be happy to leak this stuff to our best advantage.
Like to prevent that, Hillary? Here’s what I want, now and when you’re president…
No offense, but how do we know you aren’t Vladimir Putin?
I am hoping that Mossad has a copy of her emails and they will release them as an October surprize and kill off Hillary’s quest for the presidency.
by the same token, who knows what Iran has from Hillary now, that can be used against Obama, in making their deal. Or maybe Iran has Obama’s school records, or compromising college pictures. Obama/Hillary have been fairly compliant to our enemies, for whatever reason.
“does anyone remember her saying so publicly as the Obama administration spun the video motive?”
iirc, it was Clinton that put out the first memo about the video protest as a cause, even before there was word of what had become of Stevens. She might have gotten it from Blumenthal, or maybe it was all subterfuge. In any case, she knew better a few hours later, hence, surely so did Jarrett/Obama.
They all must have agreed for political (al Qaeda on the run) reasons, to keep the video story, which likely originated with Hillary. But Hillary let Rice take the heat as Obama’s human shield on all the networks. “All evidence so far indicates a spontaneous reaction to that video”. Then Hillary at the funerals promises the mourners she’ll get the video guy.
It is sickening that the MSM is still shilling from Shrillary Shroooooooo.
What..Possible…DIFFERENCE…Does it make..??!!
Answer: ALL the diff, Hilly Baby.
Could you please, pretty please write an article that dispels the myth that there are no laws against violating requirements for the storage and dissemination of classified and otherwise controlled documents such as sensitive or confidential. It seems that there is a mass insanity where everyone in the press and most in the public believes there are no laws requiring certain requirements for any computer system that handles classified materials, that there are retention requirements concerning records and so forth. I have worked as a government contractor for years and we were always beat over the head about these requirements, how they are law, and how we can go to jail if we violate them, but no one seems to believe me when I tell them. Perhaps an authoritative article on the laws concerning classified records would be extremely helpful to clear the air of confusion and hype. Thanks.