The 15 Benghazi emails you need to read
The State Department released close to 900 pages of emails from Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary on Friday, providing a detailed looked at how an embattled agency responded to terrorist attacks in Benghazi and how Clinton, the frontrunner for the 2016 Democratic nomination for president, deals with her inner circle of advisers and well-wishers.
POLITICO read the documents to find the most insightful and telling emails. There are deadly serious moments — Clinton learning of the death of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, for instance — and light-hearted ones, as when she jokes about her concussion. And there are political moments, with glimpses of top officials’ concerns about how the attack on the Libyan compound would affect the 2012 elections. While there doesn’t seem to be the kind of “smoking gun” that many Republicans imagined, the exchanges provide plenty of one-liners that will surely be used against Clinton when she testifies before a House panel later this year.
Here are the emails you should read:
Clinton’s critics are sure to seize on this email. Jake Sullivan, a former Clinton deputy chief of staff, wrote Clinton outlining what appears to be talking points on her leadership in Libya. In that memo he declares that Clinton has been “the public face of the U.S. effort in Libya.” Sullivan, it seems, was referring to the American-led efforts to topple former Libyan strongman Muammar Qaddafi. “She was instrumental in securing the authorization, building the coalition and tightening the noose around Qadhafi and his regime.”
The document that was eventually classified
Clinton has insisted she didn’t share classified information through her email account, but the State Department concluded that one email exchange on potential arrests after the attacks was indeed classified. The document appears to have been formally classified Friday by the State Department.
In December 2012, Clinton was scheduled to testify before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Benghazi, but her appearance was scuttled after she fainted and suffered from a concussion. In a Dec. 20 email, Clinton joked that she was still “nursing my cracked head” in an email to two aides, William Burns and Thomas Nides. Burns responded that he felt “very luck to serve in your State Department” — one of many notes of flattery contained in the documents.
On Sept. 11, a State Department employee named Sean Smith was killed in the attacks, along with Ambassador Chris Stevens. Smith’s death was confirmed by the Libyans, Clinton wrote in an email to top advisers, where she mistakenly called him “Chris Smith.”
In the hours before the attack
At 5:50 a.m. on Sept. 11, 2012 — hours before news reports would first show footage from the compound attack — Clinton was emailing about Libya. Her request to close aide Huma Abedin? Nothing indicating any concerns about security on the anniversary of al Qaeda’s deadliest attack. Instead, Clinton asked for a copy of Bernard Henri-Levi’s film that appeared at the Cannes Film Festival.
The batch of emails also contains numerous memos from Sidney Blumenthal — a former White House adviser to Bill Clinton — who served as a de facto intelligence source for Hillary Clinton. He prepared dozens of memos on Libya for the secretary of state, discussing what his contacts in the region were hearing about security, political plans and Benghazi.
This is what he had to say in an Oct. 25, 2012 email where he discussed private discussion of Libyan leaders:
“Sources with direct access to the Libyan National Transitional Council, as well as the highest levels of European Governments, and Western Intelligence and security services. During mid-October 2012 Libyan President Yussef el Magariaf stated in private that he and Prime Minister Ali Zidan have ordered National Libyan Amy Chief of Staff General Youssef al Mangoush to establish a more coordinated operational relationship with Misrata and Zintan militias in order to support expanded army operations throughout the country.”
But Blumenthal’s memos to Clinton did not go without scrutiny. In one email, dated March 9, 2012, to Sullivan, Clinton wrote that Blumenthal’s analysis “strains credulity.” Blumenthal had emailed about attempts to establish a “semi-autonomous zone” in Cyrenaica, the historic name for Libya’s eastern region, which contains Benghazi.
One of the lingering criticisms of the Obama administration’s response to the growing chaos in Benghazi was that the State Department ignored early warnings that its facilities were faltering. Here are concerns from a Sept. 14, 2011, email forwarded to Clinton written by Elizabeth Dibble, the then-principal deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs.
“State of Embassy Tripoli facility:…..the facility is not salvageable - the condition is “shocking and photos don’t do it justice.” Floor have collapsed, the ballistic glass and metal support beams have melted, and it has been totally trashed.”
On June 10, 2011, the U.S. team in Benghazi was staying in a hotel that received “a credible threat” against it. Sullivan noted in his email to Clinton that the “rest of the intl community” used this hotel but the Americans would be evacuated after information suggested that the property would be attacked in the next 24 to 48 hours. The hotel was located in Benghazi.
Even emails dealing with serious requests from Clinton to her staff give insight into how the former secretary of state consumes information. In a Oct. 9, 2012, email to counselor Cheryl Mills, Clinton wrote that she was listening to NPR when some news caught her attention.
In the initial days after the terrorist attack, the Obama administration blamed an anti-Islamic video for inciting the violence that lead to Stevens’ death. It’s clear from the emails that Clinton — the top U.S. diplomat at the time — was concerned in the weeks that followed about her comments on the attacks’ cause. The ever-loyal Sullivan assured her on Sept. 30, 2012, that she had not attributed the attack to demonstrators.
“Attached is full compilation,” he wrote to her, attaching copies of all her public statements in the immediate aftermath. “You never said spontaneous or characterized the motives, in fact you were careful in your first statement to say we were assessing motive and method. The way you treated the video in the Libya context was to say that some sought to *justify* the attack on that basis.”
This Nov. 19, 2012, email clearly shows a concern within the Clinton State Department with how a series of talking points describing the attack was received. During a series of congressional hearings on the attacks, Matthew Olsen, then the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, wrote to Clinton’s chief of staff of the “outlandish behavior” at the hearings.
Clinton had a packed schedule while at State — often with meetings and events scheduled in 5-to-10 minutes increments. A Nov. 26, 2012, email included in the release detailed Clinton’s day from 7:30 a.m. (a phone call with an Egyptian foreign minister) to her arrival back at her Washington D.C. home at 6:10 p.m. Highlights of that day include a White House meeting in the Situation Room with Assistant Secretary Patrick Kennedy, a 5-minute “drop by” for press handler Philippe Reines’ birthday and two quick photo ops.
Philippe Reines, a Clinton aide and later deputy assistant secretary, is not known for mincing words when it comes to the 4th estate. In an unvarnished email to colleague Tom Nides, Reines describes an awkward interview between Clinton and Wall Street Journal reporter Monica Langley.
“Tom, she moved that yellow chair as close as it went. Knee to knee. Amazed she didn’t try knee in between knee. And if that wasn’t enough, she leaned forward. More like a pivot, as far as her torso could fold forward to minimize the space between their heads. Was like the dental hygienist rolling around the floor to get the best access to your mouth depending on what tooth she was trying to get access to I’ve never seen a Westerner invade her space like that And even the non Westerners I’ve seen do it based on cultural differences have been only briefly to greet, This went on like that for 51 minutes - unacceptable in any culture. I don’t even think you see that behavior among any type of mammal. The touching the leg and repeatedly calling her ‘Hillary’ was just gravy. But it was wonderful. One of the best interviews I’ve ever witnessed. Wish it were on live tv,” Reines wrote.
Clinton sent a five-paragraph note to her State Department staffers at the end of 2012 thanking them for their work, especially given the “challenging week” the department had just faced. (The email came after dehydration caused Clinton to faint.) She discussed what the State Department had learned in the previous year on Benghazi and thanked the Accountability Review Board for its probe into the attacks.
“We need to learn from the tragedy in Benghazi and make every possible improvement — and we will,” she wrote. “I want to thank Ambassador Pickering, Admiral Mullen, and all the members of Accountability Review Board. Their report takes a clear-eyed look at the serious and systemic problems that we are already working to fix. I have accepted every one of the Board’s recommendations.”
“I am determined to leave the State Department and USAID stronger, safer, and more secure than I found them. I owe that to each of you.”