With Little Notice, State Dept Threw Hillary Under the Bus

Posted on July 31, 2015July 31, 2015 by Denise Simon

She is deserving on this…whew hoo

State Confirms Clinton Failed to Turn Over ALL Benghazi and Libya Documents

June 25, 2015

Press Release

Washington, DC—Select Committee on Benghazi Chairman Trey Gowdy today released the following statement after the State Department Thursday evening informed the committee former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did not turn over all of her records related to Benghazi and Libya.

“The State Department has informed the Select Committee that Secretary Clinton has failed to turn over all her Benghazi and Libya related records. This confirms doubts about the completeness of Clinton’s self-selected public record and raises serious questions about her decision to erase her personal server—especially before it could be analyzed by an independent, neutral third party arbiter.

“This has implications far beyond Libya, Benghazi and our committee’s work. This conclusively shows her email arrangement with herself, which was then vetted by her own lawyers, has resulted in an incomplete public record.

“These new messages in many instances were Clinton’s responses, which clearly show she was soliciting and regularly corresponding with Sidney Blumenthal—who was passing unvetted intelligence information about Libya from a source with a financial interest in the country. It just so happens these emails directly contradict her public statement that the messages from Blumenthal were unsolicited.

“The revelation these messages were not originally produced to the State Department by Clinton is significant and troubling.

“The State Department also turned over a new set of Clinton emails that were responsive to previous committee requests regarding Libya and Benghazi, but for some reason were not previously given to the committee under subpoena.

“Both of these revelations raise questions that the committee will now be considering carefully in the days ahead.”

***

Then the White House Threw Hillary under the bus too by leaking information to the New York Times and Hillary fought back.

From the Hillary campaign website:

Letter to the New York Times’ Dean Baquet

Dean Baquet
Executive Editor
The New York Times
620 Eighth Avenue
New York, New York

July 28, 2015

Dear Mr. Baquet:

I am writing to officially register our campaign’s grave concern with the Times’ publication of an inaccurate report related to Hillary Clinton and her email use.

I appreciate the fact that both you and the Public Editor have sought to publicly explain how this error could have been made. But we remain perplexed by the Times’ slowness to acknowledge its errors after the fact, and some of the shaky justifications that Times’ editors have made. We feel it important to outline these concerns with you directly so that they may be properly addressed and so our campaign can continue to have a productive working relationship with the Times.

I feel obliged to put into context just how egregious an error this story was. The New York Times is arguably the most important news outlet in the world and it rushed to put an erroneous story on the front page charging that a major candidate for President of the United States was the target of a criminal referral to federal law enforcement. Literally hundreds of outlets followed your story, creating a firestorm that had a deep impact that cannot be unwound. This problem was compounded by the fact that the Times took an inexplicable, let alone indefensible, delay in correcting the story and removing “criminal” from the headline and text of the story.

To review the facts, as the Times itself has acknowledged through multiple corrections, the paper’s reporting was false in several key respects: first, contrary to what the Times stated, Mrs. Clinton is not the target of a criminal referral made by the State Department’s and Intelligence Community’s Inspectors General, and second, the referral in question was not of a criminal nature at all.

Just as disturbing as the errors themselves is the Times’ apparent abandonment of standard journalistic practices in the course of its reporting on this story.

First, the seriousness of the allegations that the Times rushed to report last Thursday evening demanded far more care and due diligence than the Times exhibited prior to this article’s publication.

The Times’ readers rightfully expect the paper to adhere to the most rigorous journalistic standards. To state the obvious, it is hard to imagine a situation more fitting for those standards to be applied than when a newspaper is preparing to allege that a major party candidate for President of the United States is the target of a criminal referral received by federal law enforcement.

This allegation, however, was reported hastily and without affording the campaign adequate opportunity to respond. It was not even mentioned by your reporter when our campaign was first contacted late Thursday afternoon. Initially, it was stated as reporting only on a memo – provided to Congress by the Inspectors General from the State Department and Intelligence Community – that raised the possibility of classified material traversing Secretary Clinton’s email system. This memo — which was subsequently released publicly — did not reference a criminal referral at all. It was not until late Thursday night – at 8:36 pm – that your paper hurriedly followed up with our staff to explain that it had received a separate tip that the Inspectors General had additionally made a criminal referral to the Justice Department concerning Clinton’s email use. Our staff indicated that we had no knowledge of any such referral – understandably, of course, since none actually existed – and further indicated that, for a variety of reasons, the reporter’s allegation seemed implausible. Our campaign declined any immediate comment, but asked for additional time to attempt to investigate the allegation raised. In response, it was indicated that the campaign “had time,” suggesting the publication of the report was not imminent.

Despite the late hour, our campaign quickly conferred and confirmed that we had no knowledge whatsoever of any criminal referral involving the Secretary. At 10:36 pm, our staff attempted to reach your reporters on the phone to reiterate this fact and ensure the paper would not be going forward with any such report. There was no answer. At 10:54 pm, our staff again attempted calling. Again, no answer. Minutes later, we received a call back. We sought to confirm that no story was imminent and were shocked at the reply: the story had just published on the Times’ website.

This was, to put it mildly, an egregious breach of the process that should occur when a major newspaper like the Times is pursuing a story of this magnitude. Not only did the Times fail to engage in a proper discussion with the campaign ahead of publication; given the exceedingly short window of time between when the Times received the tip and rushed to publish, it hardly seems possible that the Times conducted sufficient deliberations within its own ranks before going ahead with the story.

Second, in its rush to publish what it clearly viewed as a major scoop, the Times relied on questionable sourcing and went ahead without bothering to seek corroborating evidence that could have supported its allegation.

In our conversations with the Times reporters, it was clear that they had not personally reviewed the IG’s referral that they falsely described as both criminal and focused on Hillary Clinton. Instead, they relied on unnamed sources that characterized the referral as such. However, it is not at all clear that those sources had directly seen the referral, either. This should have represented too many “degrees of separation” for any newspaper to consider it reliable sourcing, least of all The New York Times.

Times’ editors have attempted to explain these errors by claiming the fault for the misreporting resided with a Justice Department official whom other news outlets cited as confirming the Times’ report after the fact. This suggestion does not add up. It is our understanding that this Justice Department official was not the original source of the Times’ tip. Moreover, notwithstanding the official’s inaccurate characterization of the referral as criminal in nature, this official does not appear to have told the Times that Mrs. Clinton was the target of that referral, as the paper falsely reported in its original story.

This raises the question of what other sources the Times may have relied on for its initial report. It clearly was not either of the referring officials – that is, the Inspectors General of either the State Department or intelligence agencies – since the Times’ sources apparently lacked firsthand knowledge of the referral documents. It also seems unlikely the source could have been anyone affiliated with those offices, as it defies logic that anyone so closely involved could have so severely garbled the description of the referral.

Of course, the identity of the Times’ sources would be deserving of far less scrutiny if the underlying information had been confirmed as true. However, the Times appears to have performed little, if any, work to corroborate the accuracy of its sources’ characterizations of the IG’s referral. Key details went uninvestigated in the Times’ race to publish these erroneous allegations against Mrs. Clinton. For instance, high in the Times’ initial story, the reporters acknowledged they had no knowledge of whether or not the documents that the Times claimed were mishandled by Mrs. Clinton contained any classified markings. In Mrs. Clinton’s case, none of the emails at issue were marked. This fact was quickly acknowledged by the IC inspector general’s office within hours of the Times’ report, but it was somehow left unaddressed in the initial story.

Even after the Times’ reporting was revealed to be false, the Times incomprehensibly delayed the issuance of a full and true correction.

Our campaign first sought changes from the Times as soon as the initial story was published. Recognizing the implausibility that Mrs. Clinton herself could be the subject of any criminal probe, we immediately challenged the story’s opening line, which said the referral sought an investigation into Mrs. Clinton specifically for the mishandling of classified materials. In response, the Times’ reporters admitted that they themselves had never seen the IG’s referral, and so acknowledged the possibility that the paper was overstating what it directly knew when it portrayed the potential investigation as centering on Mrs. Clinton. It corrected the lead sentence accordingly.

The speed with which the Times conceded that it could not defend its lead citing Mrs. Clinton as the referral’s target raises questions about what inspired its confidence in the first place to frame the story that way. More importantly, the Times’ change was not denoted in the form of a correction. Rather, it was performed quietly, overnight, without any accompanying note to readers. This was troubling in its lack of transparency and risks causing the Times to appear like it is trying to whitewash its misreporting. A correction should have been posted promptly that night.

Regardless, even after this change, a second error remained in the story: the characterization of the referral as criminal at all. By Friday morning, multiple members of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform (who had been briefed by the Inspectors General) challenged this portrayal—and ultimately, so did the Department of Justice itself. Only then did the Times finally print a correction acknowledging its misstatement of the nature of the referral to the Justice Department.

Of course, the correction, coming as it did on a Friday afternoon, was destined to reach a fraction of those who read the Times’ original, erroneous report. As the Huffington Post observed:

“…it’s unlikely that the same audience will see the updated version unless the paper were to send out a second breaking news email with its latest revisions. The Clinton story also appeared [on] the front page of Friday’s print edition.”

Most maddening of all, even after the correction fixed the description of the referral within the story, a headline remained on the front page of the Times’ website that read, “Criminal Inquiry is Sought in Clinton Email Account.” It was not until even later in the evening that the word “criminal” was finally dropped from the headline and an updated correction was issued to the story. The lateness of this second correction, however, prevented it from appearing in the paper the following morning. We simply do not understand how that was allowed to occur.

Lastly, the Times’ official explanations for the misreporting is profoundly unsettling.

In a statement to the Times’ public editor, you said that the errors in the Times’ story Thursday night were “unavoidable.” This is hard to accept. As noted above, the Justice Department official that incorrectly confirmed the Times’ initial reports for other outlets does not appear to have been the initial source for the Times. Moreover, it is precisely because some individuals may provide erroneous information that it is important for the Times to sift the good information from the bad, and where there is doubt, insist on additional evidence. The Times was under no obligation to go forward on a story containing such explosive allegations coming only from sources who refused to be named. If nothing else, the Times could have allowed the campaign more time to understand the allegation being engaged. Unfortunately, the Times chose to take none of these steps.

In closing, I wish to emphasize our genuine wish to have a constructive relationship with The New York Times. But we also are extremely troubled by the events that went into this erroneous report, and will be looking forward to discussing our concerns related to this incident so we can have confidence that it is not repeated in the future.

Sincerely,

Jennifer Palmieri
Communications Director
Hillary for America

Cc: Margaret Sullivan,
Public Editor
New York Times

Berger to Hillary to Obama and Back to ’67 Lines

Posted on July 31, 2015July 31, 2015 by Denise Simon

We have enough issues with our own emails but to read the incremental releases of Hillary Clinton’s email while she was Secretary of State deserves combat pay.

In Washington DC, the media brings America the front line people, like those at the White House and cabinet secretaries, but no one pays much attention to those behind the powerbrokers of government, the real hidden workers that have the conversations, write the press releases, write the speeches, write the cables and emails and sit on the chairs lining the walls of governmental meetings. Those hidden people take the notes, measure the responses, slip notes back and forth, do the legwork, make the calls, read the legislation, scour the global media and countless other housekeeping (literally) items.

Nothing is more clear to validate the above assessment than the process of reading Hillary Clinton’s emails.

Hillary was a user of people, she exploited them for the sake of her objectives and to set diplomatic policy which rose to meetings at the White House level.

Many of those ‘staff’ types get re-cycled from administration to lobby outfits and then re-cycled again to the next campaign and administration.

Now for a key email, which proves the clues to the machinations of politics and how we and others get blindsided.

Sandy Berger urged Hillary to portray Bibi as obstacle to peace

By Philip Klein:

Sandy Berger, a former national security adviser for President Bill Clinton who pled guilty to stealing and destroying classified documents, advised Hillary Clinton when she was secretary of state on how to portray Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as the obstacle to peace and how to make his political life “uneasy.”

The revelations came in a new batch of Clinton’s emails released on Friday by the State Department.

In the emails, Berger, who chairs the global business advisory firm Albright Stonebridge Group (along with former Bill Clinton Secretary of State Madeline Albright), outlined a strategy to turn the tables on Netanyahu diplomatically in negotiations with Palestinians.

“The objective is to try shift the fulcrum of our current relations with Bibi from settlements — where he thinks he has the upper hand — to ground where there is greater understanding in Israel of the American position and where we can make him uneasy about incurring our displeasure,” Berger wrote on Sept. 19. 2009, days ahead of a speech to President Obama at the United Nations.

Berger wrote, “Ironically, his intransigence over 67 borders may offer us that possibility — to turn his position against him.”

He argued, “Assuming Bibi will accept no formulation that includes 67 borders, it suggests that Bibi is the obstacle to progress and backtracking on his part on an issue that previous Israeli governments have accepted. It begins shifting the discussion from settlements to the more fundamental issue of ultimate territorial outcome.”

Three days later, he wrote, “Going forward, if Bibi continues to be the obstacle, you will need to find the ground from which you can make his politics uneasy.”

On that same day, Sept. 22, Obama addressed the United Nations General Assembly, calling for, “a viable, independent Palestinian state with contiguous territory that ends the occupation that began in 1967.”

Clinton emailed Berger that afternoon, asking, “Let me know how you think today played.”

The fact that Clinton was soliciting advice from Berger while secretary of state is part of a pattern of her taking guidance from former loyal soldiers of her husband’s administration with sketchy histories, as she also was in close contact with political operative Sidney Blumenthal — asking for intelligence on Libya as he did consulting work related to the nation.

Berger became infamous in 2003 when, ahead of testimony before the Sept. 11 Commission, he stole highly classified documents from the National Archives and Records Administration by stuffing them in his pants, and destroyed some of them.

Though he initially claimed it was an “honest mistake,” he later pled guilty to removing them intentionally, triggering a $50,000 fine, and 100-hour community service requirement.

That wasn’t Berger’s first brush with the law. In 1997, while serving as national security adviser for Bill Clinton, Berger had to pay a $23,000 penalty for failing to sell stock as directed by the White House, leading to a conflict of interest.

The checkered past didn’t stop Hillary Clinton from making Berger one of her national security advisers in her 2008 campaign, nor, evidently, did it prevent her from being in contact with him at the State Department.

Clinton had a contentious relationship with Netanyahu, famously boasting that she was the administration’s “designated yeller” at the Israeli prime minister.

In May 2011, Obama caused an uproar when he called for a two-state solution based borders that existed before Israel’s victory in the 1967 Six Day War. Israel considers those borders indefensible, because they are as narrow as nine miles.

On Planned Parenthood, Anyone Remember Anita Dunn or Ann Richards?

Posted on July 30, 2015July 30, 2015 by Denise Simon

Maybe we should be checking Hillary’s emails for several other items.

Ann Richards was the 45th Governor of Texas and the one who famously said at the 1988 Democratic Convention ” Poor George, he cant help it, he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth.

Well, Ann has a daughter, Cecile Richards who is the president of Planned Parenthood, which at the very moment I type this, the Planned Parenthood website is down for maintenance. Riiiiiight.

There is more:

A crisis management company called SKDKnickerbocker has been hired to begin the Planned Parenthood damage control mission. The managing director of SKDKnickerbocker is none other than Anita Dunn, of Mao Tse Tung fame.

Yes, there is more. Anita Dunn is married to Robert Bauer, Obama’s inside and personal White House lawyer.

So, for a summary fro Politico, but Politico DID leave out a few details, yet they are provided above. But hat-tip to Politico, they did include a few others.

Clinton’s Planned Parenthood ties run deep

The fetal-tissue scandal presents questions and opportunities for the Democratic front-runner.

Hillary Clinton is friends with Planned Parenthood’s president and took a rare pause from her duties as secretary of state to keynote a Planned Parenthood gala, while her family foundation has worked with the group to promote birth control.

So when Planned Parenthood found itself in the middle of a major scandal last week when anti-abortion activists released graphic undercover videos of executives discussing the alleged sale of aborted fetal tissue, Clinton’s support for the group was not so much a choice as a foregone conclusion — Planned Parenthood’s problem was Clinton’s problem, too.

Story Continued Below

“I have seen pictures from them and obviously find them disturbing,” Clinton said in an interview with the New Hampshire Union Leader Tuesday, distancing herself from the content in the videos. But she was quick to reiterate her support for Planned Parenthood as an organization, saying, “Planned Parenthood for more than a century has done a lot of really good work for women: cancer screenings, family planning, all kinds of health services.”

And while Republicans seized on the scandal to attack Clinton — demanding that she return the group’s campaign contributions — some Democrats were quick to see some silver linings. A full-throated defense of Planned Parenthood helps shore up Clinton’s support among wavering liberals, while the GOP’s efforts to defund the family-planning group allow Clinton to make the case that her election would be a bulwark against efforts to roll back women’s rights.

“The first job is to become the nominee, and the best route is to speak to the ideological base,” explained Democratic strategist Hank Sheinkopf. “Their basic language is protecting choice and that is what Planned Parenthood symbolizes. Those who don’t agree are likely not voting for her anyway, and if she is the Democratic Party nominee, will not be voting for her in the fall of 2016.”

Indeed, when the scandal began to spread last week, Clinton was quick to put it in the context of years of attacks on an organization synonymous with support for abortion rights.

Planned Parenthood has been “the object of such a concerted attack for so many years, and it’s really an attack against a woman’s right to choose, to make the most personal difficult decisions that any woman would face,” Clinton said at a campaign appearance in South Carolina.

But Clinton’s relationship with Planned Parenthood goes beyond a shared belief in a woman’s right to choose. The group is interwoven with a network of women’s organizations that are among her strongest backers, and Planned Parenthood leaders and activists are among her personal friends, including President Cecile Richards.

When Clinton announced her candidacy for President last April, Richards tweeted that “there has never been a presidential candidate with as strong a commitment to women’s health & rights” and called the moment #Historic. The Planned Parenthood Action Fund noted in a news release at the time that Clinton had a 100 percent congressional scorecard every year she served in the Senate, during which the fund tracked 16 votes.

In an added sign of bonhomie between Clinton and the top Planned Parenthood executive, Richards’ daughter, former Democratic National Committee spokeswoman Lily Adams, signed up last spring with the Clinton campaign as Iowa press secretary, a high-profile portfolio for a campaign eager to shore up support in the important early state that rejected Clinton in 2008.

Planned Parenthood Action Fund, the group’s federal political action committee, gave $8,000 to Clinton’s 2000 Senate campaign, and $1,837 to her presidential committee in the 2008 cycle, records show. Many of Planned Parenthood’s PAC biggest donors are also longtime Clinton donors, some of whom supported the Ready For Hillary PAC as early as 2013, and have maxed out with $2,700 contributions to her primary campaign this year.

Longtime Democratic donor and proponent of women candidates Barbara Lee, for example, was one of the top 20 Planned Parenthood Action Committee donors in the 2012 cycle. She also donated $7,000 to Ready For Hillary in 2013. And other major Planned Parenthood donors like Susan Mandel, Democratic bundler Naomi Aberly and major Democratic donor Amber Mostyn, have all maxed-out for Clinton with $2,700 donations.

Clinton’s relationship with Planned Parenthood also extends to the Clinton Global Initiative. For the past two years Planned Parenthood has been a member of CGI and in 2012 committed to train “youth peer providers” in Latin America, Africa and the U.S. on ways to promote birth control.

Additionally, Planned Parenthood will sponsor two global youth fellowship programs and create a national youth organizing strategy to help push for increased investment in access to reproductive health care, according to CGI’s website. Planned Parenthood does not contribute money to CGI, according to sources familiar with the organizations.

Clinton and Planned Parenthood also share consultants and allies.

Planned Parenthood has enlisted Democratic consultant SKDKnickerbocker’s Hilary Rosen, another close Clinton ally, to help with the current public relations crisis. And Planned Parenthood Action Fund hired Democratic pollster Geoff Garin — who is also the pollster on the Clinton super PAC Priorities USA and served as a chief strategist of Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign — to conduct a poll about attitudes toward the organization.

Emily’s List, which has been leading the movement to stand with Planned Parenthood, raising money off the most recent defunding threats while collecting 22,000 signatures from its members standing with Planned Parenthood, is a major backer of Clinton’s campaign. It’s president, Stephanie Schriock, was a short-lister for Clinton’s campaign manager.

“Planned Parenthood is something that women and families rely on all over the country,” said Emily’s List spokeswoman Jess McIntosh. “Hillary has such a strong record of understanding the realities of women that of course she understands that, too.”

Some of Clinton’s Republican rivals are eager to tar her with the most recent scandal.

“Hillary Clinton in particular should be made to answer if she is proud to have received such enthusiastic support from Planned Parenthood while they are under investigation for multiple felonies,” Sen. Ted Cruz told POLITICO Wednesday in the Capitol. “I think Hillary Clinton should be made to answer if she supports an organization that buys and sells the body parts of unborn children in direct violation of federal law. [She] ought to be asked: Do you share those values? Does that reflect the core values of your campaign?”

At an anti-abortion rally earlier in the week, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), another 2016 GOP hopeful, called on Clinton to refund Planned Parenthood contributions.

“Hillary Clinton’s hands are stained by accepting this money,” Paul said. “She needs to immediately return every red cent she has received from Planned Parenthood employees.”

Cruz and Paul’s attacks on Clinton may be aimed at rallying support among the Republican base, but they are also what many Democratic strategists said they are hoping for — that Republicans will get mired in fighting Clinton on social issues, rather than fiscal or economic issues.

“Both Democrats and independents overwhelmingly support continued support for Planned Parenthood, and women voters in particular look at Planned Parenthood as a trusted source of health care,” said Garin, who conducted a recent poll on the issue for Planned Parenthood Action Fund. “In political terms, it’s very clear that Hillary Clinton is on the right side of public opinion. The Republicans who have a mania against Planned Parenthood are digging a deep hole for themselves with general election voters.”

A spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood did not respond to requests for comment. <— Maybe they are too busy working on their broken/downed website.

Hillary Used Several Intel Agencies, Hundreds of Classified Emails

Posted on July 30, 2015July 30, 2015 by Denise Simon

Hillary Clinton with her lawyer, David Kendall have worked out the details to testify before the House Committee on Benghazi led by Congressman Trey Gowdy.

By Marisa Taylor, Greg Gordon and Anita Kumar

McClatchy Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON

The classified emails stored on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private server contained information from five U.S. intelligence agencies and included material related to the fatal 2012 Benghazi attacks, McClatchy has learned.

Of the five classified emails, the one known to be connected to Benghazi was among 296 emails made public in May by the State Department. Intelligence community officials have determined it was improperly released.

Revelations about the emails have put Clinton in the crosshairs of a broadening inquiry into whether she or her aides mishandled classified information when she used a private server set up at her New York home to conduct official State Department business.

While campaigning for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, Clinton has repeatedly denied she ever sent or received classified information. Two inspectors general have indicated that five emails they have reviewed were not marked classified at the time they were stored on her private server but that the contents were in fact “secret.”

The email issue, however, has distracted from Clinton’s campaign for days and already has hurt her in public opinion polls. Besieged with questions, she has found herself caught in a murky dispute between State Department and intelligence officials over whether emails on her server were classified.

“Even if Secretary Clinton or her aides didn’t run afoul of any criminal provisions, the fact that classified information was identified within the emails is exactly why use of private emails . . . is not supposed to be allowed,” said Bradley Moss, a Washington attorney who specializes in national security matters. “Both she and her team made a serious management mistake that no one should ever repeat.”

The facts are pretty clear. I did not send nor receive anything that was classified at the time. Hillary Clinton at a campaign stop Saturday in Iowa

McClatchy also has determined some details of the five emails that the intelligence community’s inspector general has described as classified and improperly handled.

Intelligence officials who reviewed the five classified emails determined that they included information from five separate intelligence agencies, said a congressional official with knowledge of the matter.

The Benghazi email made public contained information from the National Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, a spy agency that maps and tracks satellite imagery, according to the official, who asked to remain anonymous because of the sensitivity of the matter.

The other four classified emails contained information from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the CIA, the official said.

The Office of the Intelligence Community Inspector General did not respond to questions about the matter. The five agencies either referred questions about it to the inspector general’s office or declined to comment.

The intelligence community inspector general only looked at a sample of 40 emails, even though a total of 30,000 emails were turned over to the State Department by Clinton.

Failure to observe any of the requirements for marking or safeguarding (classified information) would be in a category known as a security violation. John Fitzpatrick, director of the Information Security Oversight Office at the National Archives

In documents that were publicly released, Intelligence Community Inspector General I. Charles McCullough III said State Department officials had warned that there were “potentially hundreds of classified emails” on Clinton’s private server.

Clinton’s campaign did not respond to requests for comment. Clinton has maintained she used a personal email account as a “matter of convenience” and has denied she emailed any classified material.

“The facts are pretty clear,” Clinton said at a campaign stop Saturday in Iowa. “I did not send nor receive anything that was classified at the time.”

Clinton said she had “no idea” which emails the inspector general had singled out.

The State Department so far has refused to grant the intelligence community inspector general access to the entire batch of emails on jurisdictional grounds. The inspector general has authority to audit and investigate matters related to 17 intelligence community agencies, including a State Department intelligence unit.

On June 25, McCullough notified members of Congress that he understood that Clinton’s attorney, David Kendall, possessed the more than 30,000 Clinton emails on a computer thumb drive.

In a July 24 letter to FBI Director James Comey, Republican Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa expressed concern about “a compromise of national security information” because of Kendall’s possession of the thumb drive. He called on Comey to explain what steps the FBI had taken to secure the information.

Even if Secretary Clinton or her aides didn’t run afoul of any criminal provisions, the fact that classified information was identified within the emails is exactly why use of private emails . . . is not supposed to be allowed. Bradley Moss, a Washington attorney who specializes in national security matters

“This raises very serious questions and concerns if a private citizen is somehow retaining classified information,” wrote Grassley, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee.

Kendall did not respond to phone and email messages. The FBI and the Justice Department declined to say whether security officials had recovered the device or had arranged for its secure storage.

John Fitzpatrick, the official responsible for overseeing the government’s security classification system, told McClatchy that during the review of four years of Clinton’s State Department emails it became clear that intelligence agencies were concerned State Department officials were not appropriately protecting classified information in screening documents for public release.

State Department officials routinely gather and report diplomatic information that “in an intelligence context could be read very differently,” said Fitzpatrick, the director of the Information Security Oversight Office at the National Archives.

Government employees with access to classified information are trained to identify classified information, Fitzpatrick said.

“The requirement to mark is so that you know it when you see it,” he said. “Failure to observe any of the requirements for marking or safeguarding would be in a category known as a security violation.”

Failing to properly mark information as classified would not necessarily result in criminal charges, he said.

“But there can be consequences for holders of security clearances,” Fitzpatrick said. “If they fail to safeguard the information, once or as part of a pattern, they can be administratively reprimanded” or retrained.

According to a congressional official, the classified emails contained information from the National Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the CIA.

Secretary of State John Kerry and State Department Inspector General Steve Linick will meet this week to talk about the issue, White House spokesman Eric Schultz said Wednesday.

“Secretary Kerry wants to get to the bottom of this, hear what the concerns are and then figure out if they need to take any action,” Schultz said. “So, I think that’s the right step and we support him doing so.”

The White House has not said that Clinton did not follow rules, but it has repeatedly said that “very specific guidance has been given to agencies all across the government, which is specifically that employees in the Obama administration should use their official email accounts when they’re conducting official government business.”

The House Select Committee on Benghazi subpoenaed the emails while asking Clinton to voluntarily turn over her personal email server to a “neutral, detached and independent” third party for “immediate inspection and review,” perhaps the State Department’s inspector general.

Clinton’s attorney told the committee that Clinton permanently deleted all the emails from the server – apparently after she was asked by the State Department to turn them over. Clinton has refused to hand over the server.

The State Department has begun to release her emails in response to a public records lawsuit, though four of the emails containing classified information were among those that have not yet been released. The next batch is due to be released Friday. Clinton has agreed to testify about her email arrangements on Oct. 22 before the committee investigating Benghazi.

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/article29519419.html#storylink=cpy

Clinton Campaign Punting on Missing Benghazi Abedin Emails?

Posted on July 29, 2015July 29, 2015 by Denise Simon

Check that Lincoln bedroom….no one knows anything, perhaps Sidney Blumenthal is still available or Sandy Berger hid them in some vault posthumously.

There is some inside the DC beltway conspiracy when it comes to official government business emails. They all seem to go missing.

The Missing Hillary Emails No One Can Explain

Daily Beast: There is a two-month gap in Hillary Clinton’s emails that coincides with violence in Libya and the employment status of a top Clinton aide, Huma Abedin.

Among the approximately 2,000 emails that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has released from her private account, there is a conspicuous two-month gap. There are no emails between Clinton and her State Department staff during May and June 2012, a period of escalating violence in Libya leading up to the September 11 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi that left four Americans dead.

A State Department spokesman told The Daily Beast that for the year 2012, only those emails related to the security of the consulate or to the U.S. diplomatic presence in Libya were made public and turned over to a House committee investigating the fatal Benghazi assault. But if that’s true, then neither Clinton nor her staff communicated via email about the escalating dangers in Libya. There were three attacks during that two-month period, including one that targeted the consulate.

That two-month period also coincides with a senior Clinton aide obtaining a special exemption that allowed her to work both as a staff member to the secretary and in a private capacity for Clinton and her husband’s foundation. The Associated Press has sued to obtain emails from Clinton’s account about the aide, Huma Abedin.

The status of Clinton’s emails has become an explosive political issue ever since The New York Times revealed that the then-Secretary of State was using a private email server to handle her official correspondence. Cybersecurity experts believe the homebrew system opened Clinton and her colleagues to targeting from online spies. The State Department and Intelligence Community Inspector Generals have asked the Justice Department to look into possible disclosure of classified information.

Regarding the security situation in Libya, there was plenty for Clinton and her team to discuss via email. On May 22, 2012, the International Red Cross’s Benghazi office was hit by rocket-propelled grenades.

“The attack on the International Red Cross was another attack that also involved us and threats to the compound there in Benghazi,” testified Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Wood, a senior State Department security chief in Libya (PDF) before the House Oversight Committee in October 2012.

Then, on June 6, an improvised explosive device detonated outside of the U.S. consulate, ripping a 12-foot-wide hole in the compound’s wall and prompting officials to release a public warning on “the fluid security situation in Libya.”

Yet the State Department has not produced any emails to or from Clinton about the improvised bomb.

Republicans on the House committee investigating the Benghazi attack have called the absence of any email communication noting the explosive attack at the U.S. consulate “inexplicable.”

“There are gaps of months and months and months,” Republican Representative Trey Gowdy, chairman of the Select Committee on Benghazi, said in a March 8 interview.

“The State Department transferred 300 messages exclusively reviewed and released by her [Clinton’s] own lawyers,” Gowdy added in a May 22 statement noting gaps in the email records. “To assume a self-selected public record is complete, when no one with a duty or responsibility to the public had the ability to take part in the selection, requires a leap in logic no impartial reviewer should be required to make and strains credibility.”

Since then, the Benghazi committee has recovered one email, largely about business interests in Libya, from June 2012 after subpoenaing Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal. The email from Blumenthal does not mention threats to the U.S. consulate, and there is no response from Clinton. The State Department subsequently gave the committee its copy.

U.S. interests weren’t the only ones being targeted in Benghazi. Five days after the improvised bomb damaged the consulate, an RPG hit a convoy carrying the British ambassador in Benghazi, wounding two bodyguards.

The United Kingdom and the Red Cross closed their facilities in Benghazi by the end of June 2012.

From there, the violence directed at the U.S. escalated. In a cable dated July 9, 2012, U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens asked that the State Department provide a minimum of 13 security personnel for the U.S. embassy in Tripoli and the consulate in Benghazi, noting a heightened security threat. The State Department did not fulfill Stevens’s request, a Senate Intelligence Committee report (PDF) later revealed.

A Clinton aide didn’t respond specifically to a request about the two-month email absence. But in a statement to reporters, Clinton spokesperson Nick Merrill noted, “More emails are slated to be released by the State Department next week, and we hope that release is as inclusive as possible.”

The two-month period wasn’t notable only for violence in Libya, and it has been the subject of questions about Clinton’s email and State Department records for a different reason.

On June 3, Abedin, a longtime Clinton aide and personal friend of the Clinton family, was given the status of a “special government employee,” which allowed her to stay on the State Department payroll while simultaneously working for the Clinton Foundation, Teneo, a consulting firm founded by Clinton confidant Doug Band, and as a private adviser to Clinton regarding her post-State Department transition.

Conflict-of-interest laws ordinarily would prohibit that arrangement, but the special designation exempted Abedin from some ethics rules.

In 2013, the AP filed a Freedom of Information Act request for State Department records on how Abedin obtained the special employee status. The news organization asked for emails about the matter.

Last week, a federal judge gave the State Department one week to respond to the AP’s two-year-old request. At midnight Tuesday, just before the judge’s deadline, the department’s lawyers submitted a declaration identifying about 68 pages of “potentially responsive” documents.

That marked the first time that the department acknowledged, in its two-year dispute with the AP, the existence of any agency documents related to Abedin’s arrangement.

Michael Smallberg, an investigator at the Project on Government Oversight, told The Daily Beast that while special government employees are not uncommon, the lack of information about Abedin may be keeping alive questions about potential conflict of interest in her work for the secretary and the foundation’s fundraising.

“Unless you come across any evidence to the contrary, there’s no reason to believe she was abusing the special government position,” Smallberg said. But, “the State Department has allowed those concerns to fester by withholding basic information,” Smallberg added. “Even if she did nothing wrong, secrecy breeds mistrust.”

State Department lawyers have argued that once all of Clinton’s emails are released on the agency’s website, following a vetting process that will take months, the AP’s request for information about Abedin will have been satisfied.

However, since some of the emails on Abedin that the AP wants likely fall within the June 2012 time frame, that might not be the case.

About 7 percent of Clinton’s emails have been released. All the emails are scheduled to be released on a rolling, monthly basis until the last set is released in January 2016, to comply with an order by a different federal judge. The next release is tentatively scheduled for this Friday.