New Emails Offer Window Into Blumenthal Role in Hillary Clinton’s Life By Peter Nicholas And Byron Tau
http://www.wsj.com/articles/new-emails-offer-window-into-blumenthal-role-in-hillary-clintons-career-1435017628
Blumenthal is part of far-flung coterie of confidantes in Clintons’ lives
He advised then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on the need for a “ferocious” bombing campaign in Libya during the U.S.’s 2011 military intervention. He sent flattering notes and told Mrs. Clinton she should take her rightful place in history for helping oust former Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi.
A new batch of emails released by a congressional committee Monday offers a rare window into the unique and complicated role that Sidney Blumenthal has played in the life of Mrs. Clinton, now the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination.
The committee had asked Mr. Blumenthal for documents and deposed him last week as part of a broader investigation.
Mr. Blumenthal, a former journalist with the New Yorker and Washington Post, served in the White House during Bill Clinton’s second term and worked on special projects and as a communications strategist.
He is part of a far-flung coterie of confidantes who appear and reappear in the Clintons’ lives. Loyal to former aides, the Clintons seldom jettison those who enter the inner circle and often find new ways to put them to work.
“It’s kind of like the old Girl Scout song: Make new friends, but keep the old,” Mrs. Clinton said at a fundraising in event in April, describing her 2016 campaign team.
Donna Shalala, a cabinet secretary under Bill Clinton, was recently named head of the Clinton Foundation. Cheryl Mills defended Mr. Clinton during the impeachment proceedings in the late 1990s and went on to become one of Mrs. Clinton’s most trusted advisers.
When she became secretary of state in 2009, Mrs. Clinton had wanted to hire Mr. Blumenthal, who had played a prominent role in the Clinton White House.
White House aides objected, in part due to tensions dating back to the Democratic primary. Instead, Mr. Blumenthal joined the payroll of the Clinton Foundation, the family’s charity.
‘…Qaddafi’s army’s morale and cohesion might be conclusively shattered by another round or two of ferocious bombing…’
When the U.S. and other nations battled the Gadhafi regime in 2011, Mr. Blumenthal sent. Mrs. Clinton a string of emails to her private email account that often included intelligence assessments passed on from a source whom the Select Committee on Benghazi, which was created to probe the 2012 death of the U.S. ambassador there, identified as former CIA official Tyler Drumheller.
The correspondence has become one element of a broader investigation into the Obama administration’s handling of the Benghazi attacks and Mrs. Clinton’s exclusive use of a private email account when at the State Department, an unusual practice that critics assert allowed her to get around records-disclosure rules. Mrs. Clinton has agreed to testify before the committee; a date has not yet been set.
Mrs. Clinton downplayed the email messages from Mr. Blumenthal last month in a news conference. “He sent me unsolicited emails which I passed on in some instances, and I see that that’s just part of the give and take,” she said.
An attorney for Mr. Blumenthal didn’t respond to a request for comment. Last week, Mr. Blumenthal said the committee’s motives for investigating him were political, given his friendship with Mrs. Clinton.
It is unclear from the exchanges precisely what Mrs. Clinton thought of Mr. Blumenthal’s notes. When she replied, she kept the answers brief, although occasionally encouraged him to send more material.
“Greetings from Kabul! And thanks for keeping this stuff coming!” she wrote in July, 2012.
Mr. Blumenthal’s advice to Mrs. Clinton was wide-ranging.
An email from Mr. Blumenthal to Mrs. Clinton on March 26, 2011 is titled “Shock & Awe.”
“Though Libyan air defenses have been degraded under the no-fly zone directive, Qaddafi’s army’s morale and cohesion might be conclusively shattered by another round or two of ferocious bombing targeting concentrations of his military assets,” Mr. Blumenthal wrote. There was no reply to that message from Mrs. Clinton in the cache of documents released Monday.
Another email shows Mr. Blumenthal eager for Mrs. Clinton to receive credit for the intervention, which culminated in Mr. Gadhafi’s death.
“This is an historic moment and you will be credited for realizing it,” he wrote August 22, 2011. “When Qaddafi is finally removed, you should of course make a public statement before the cameras wherever you are, even in the driveway of your vacation house. You must go on camera. You must establish yourself in the historical record at this moment.” Mrs. Clinton didn’t appear to respond to that message, either.
Today, Libya is a fractured state beset by civil war.
The committee investigating Benghazi deposed Mr. Blumenthal in private session last week. “He was in some instances a conduit of uncorroborated information to our country’s top diplomat, which is problematic enough,” said Rep. Trey Gowdy (R., S.C.), the committee’s chairman, in an interview. “But he did tend to veer from time to time to giving policy advice, which is unusual since he’s never been to Libya and knows no more than you and I do about it.”
Write to Peter Nicholas at peter.nicholas@wsj.com and Byron Tau at byron.tau@wsj.com
Comments are closed.
