Clinton Advisor Sidney Blumenthal Attacks Mitt Romney as “Contemptible,” a “Mixture of Greedy Ambition and Hollowness”
(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch today released a new batch of emails of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton connected to the Benghazi attack. Included is an email chain showing that Clinton slept late the Saturday after the Benghazi attack and missed a meeting that her staff had been trying to set up about sensitive intelligence issues, including the Presidential Daily Brief, on a day she was to make a slew of phone calls to foreign leaders.
Also included in the documents is an email from Clinton advisor Sidney Blumenthal, sent three days after the attack, describing then-Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney as “contemptible on a level not seen in past contemptible political figures” and a “mixture of greedy ambition and hollowness.”
The documents contain an email passed to Clinton in the days following the Benghazi attack in which the father of alleged Army deserter Bowe Bergdahl anguishes over the “‘Crusade’ paradigm” which he says “will never be forgotten in this part of the world.”
An email from former Ambassador Joe Wilson to Clinton expresses his concern about “Christian Dominionists who seek to turn [the military] into an instrument of their religious zealotry.”
Other emails show approval of an effort to blame an Internet video on the Benghazi attack that aired on the Al Jazeera network.
The new emails were obtained by Judicial Watch as a result of several court orders in two separate Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits for Clinton Benghazi material. (The court orders are dated July 31, 2015, October 9, 2015, and October 20, 2015.) The documents have been made public only because Judicial Watch’s litigation has forced the State Department to conduct additional searches.
The new Benghazi documents include email traffic showing that on the Saturday two days after the Benghazi terrorist attack Hillary Clinton slept past staff efforts to set up an intelligence briefing:
From: Hanley, Monica
Sent: Saturday, September 15, 2012 09:17 AM
To: ‘[email protected]’ <[email protected]>
Cc: ‘[email protected]’ <[email protected]>
Subject: PDBDan will be at Whitehaven with the PDB at 9:30am this morning.
He has some sensitive items that he would like to personally show you when he arrives.
***
From: H [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Saturday, September 15, 2012 10:43 AM
To: Hanley, Monica R
Subject: Re: PDBI just woke up so I missed Dan. Could he come back after I finish my calls? But I don’t have the call schedule yet so I don’t know when that would be. Do you?
From: Hanley, Monica R [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Saturday, September 15, 2012 10:51 AM
To: H
Subject: Re: PDBA pouch with all of your call sheets and the schedule in en route to you. Here it is below as well.
Also in the pouch are a few read items, and an action memo authorizing the War Powers resolution for Tunisia that the office would like you to approve today. Ops can send a courier over to pick up the action memo later today.
12:00 UK FM Hague
12:15 Egyptian FM Amr
12:30 Israeli PM Netanyahu
1:15 French FM Fabius
1:30 Saudi FM Saud al-Faisal
2:00 Somali Former Transitional President Sharif
2:15 Libyan PM-elect Abu-Shakour
2:30 Turkish FM Davutoglu
3:00 Somali President Mohamoud (T)-Moroccan King is still pending.
-NEW CALL: King Juan Carlos of Spain called today and offered anytime today or tomorrow. His office relayed that it is a personal call inquiring after the status of the Embassies in the Middle East. We are working on a call sheet.
The State Department’s records include a September 14, 2012, email from Clinton advisor Sidney Blumenthal to Clinton in which Blumenthal passes along a controversial article by his son Max and attacks then-Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney:
From: Sidney Blumenthal
Sent: Friday, September 14, 2012 10:48 AM
To: H
Subject: Re: m.guardian.co.ukMax knows how to do this and fearless. Hope it’s useful and gets around, especially in the Middle East.
Keep speaking and clarifying. Your statements have been strong. Once through this phase, you might clarify history of US policy on Arab Spring, what has been accomplished, US interests at stake, varying relations with Libya & Egypt, etc.
Romney, of course, is contemptible, but contemptible on a level not seen in past contemptible political figures. His menace comes from his emptiness. His greed is not limited simply to mere filthy lucre. The mixture of greedy ambition and hollowness is combustible. He will do and say anything to get ahead, and while usually self-immolating he is also destructive. Behind his blandness lies boundless ignorance, ignited by consistently wretched judgment. His recent statements are of a piece with everything he has done from naming Ryan to his welfare ads, etc.
Keep speaking…
xo
Sid
The Blumenthal email includes a link to an article by his son Max Blumenthal that suggests that American conservatives, Zionists and the Israel government were behind the Internet video that was falsely linked by Clinton and Barack Obama to the Benghazi attack. Clinton responded with an approving, “Your Max is a Mitzvah.” Another email shows that Mrs. Clinton wanted three copies of the Max Blumenthal Benghazi video article printed out. (Max Blumenthal is a leftist journalist known for his attacks on Israel and American foreign policy. In January, 2015, he is quoted calling American Sniper hero Chris Kyle an “unrepentant, sadistic killer.”)
In addition to Blumenthal’s attack on Romney, the newly released documents also include an email chain forwarded to Clinton from her former State Department deputy chief of staff Jacob Sullivan in which Robert Bergdahl, the father of alleged Army deserter Bowe Bergdahl, relates the death of U.S. ambassador Chris Stevens to what the senior Bergdahl calls the “‘Crusade’ paradigm:”
Please convey our abiding condolences to everyone in the Foreign Service. Your service is most notable and almost invisible. Our Nation is stumbling through a very volatile world. The “Crusade” paradigm will never be forgotten in this part of the world and we force our Diplomats to carry a lot of baggage around while walking on eggshells.
Be very careful my friend!
I’m very sorry,
bob
After receiving the email from Mr. Bergdahl, Mrs. Clinton orders a response (which is not disclosed) be prepared.
The new documents also contain an email from former Ambassador Joe Wilson to Clinton concerning the Benghazi attack, in which he suggests the military is being compromised “Christian Dominionists” in the U.S. military:
From: Joe Wilson
Sent: Saturday, September 15, 2012 10:27 AM
To: H
Subject: From Joe WilsonDear Hillary, …
Glen Doherty [CIA contractor killed in the Benghazi attack] was a fellow member of the Military Religious Freedom Advisory Board, which fights to ensure that our military is not further compromised by the Christian Dominionists who seek to turn it into an instrument of their religious zealotry, an army for Christ rather than for the defense of our nation. He was invaluable in helping us uncover several cases where religious indoctrination was taking place under the guise of military training….
“These new Benghazi emails are disturbing and show why Hillary Clinton and the Obama administration had to be forced to disclose them,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “Hillary Clinton, despite knowing that terrorists were responsible for the attack, allowed her spokesman to go to the Arab world and blame an Internet film. Hillary Clinton trafficked in fantastical conspiracy theories that suggested both American conservatives and Israel were to blame for the Benghazi attack and jihadist violence in the Muslim world. And the crazed email from Sidney Blumenthal shows that she was taking direction on her Benghazi spin based upon attack-style presidential campaign politics. Finally, the ‘I just got up’ email shows that, smack dab in the middle of the Benghazi crisis, Hillary Clinton fell behind and may have not been fully briefed as she began an intense round of phone calls to foreign leaders.”
Judicial Watch’s FOIA lawsuits filed in 2014 and 2015 forced the release of these records.
The first lawsuit, filed on September 4, 2014, (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:14-cv-01511)), sought:
- All records concerning notes, updates, or reports created in response to the September 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. This request includes, but is not limited to, notes taken by then Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton or employees of the Office of the Secretary of State during the attack and its immediate aftermath.
The second FOIA lawsuit, filed on May 6, 2015, (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:15-cv-00692), sought:
- All emails of former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton regarding the September 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. The timeframe for this request is September 11, 2012 to January 31, 2013.
As Judicial Watch chief investigator reporter Micah Morrison detailed last month, Sidney Blumenthal advised Clinton on Libya (and may have had business interests there). The JW report also disclosed how Hillary Clinton emailed classified information to Blumenthal in response to his lobbying for Amb. Wilson’s efforts to secure taxpayer financing for an energy project in Africa. Hillary Clinton’s contacts with Blumenthal, who was also a highly paid employee of the Clinton Foundation, should have been subject to State Department ethics reviews for conflicts of interest, as promised by Mrs. Clinton. For example, in January 2009, Hillary Clinton promised President Obama and United States Senate considering her confirmation that:
If confirmed as Secretary of State, I will not participate personally and substantially in any particular matter that has a direct and predictable effect upon this foundation, unless I first obtain a written waiver or qualify for a regulatory exemption.
###
Category Archives: Insurgency
Tashfeen Malik, Made by al Qaida
Reuters: Tashfeen Malik’s path to accused mass killer in California began in a small city on the Indus River in Pakistan’s Punjab province.
It was from here, when she was a toddler, that she moved with her father Gulzar 25 years ago to Saudi Arabia, where he became more deeply religious, more conservative and more hardline, according to a family member.
A picture slowly emerged on Friday of the role and possible motivations of 27-year-old Malik in this week’s killing of 14 people in California, including her apparent pledge of allegiance to the leader of the Islamic State militant group, according to U.S. officials.
Malik, with her husband Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, is accused of storming a holiday party on Wednesday in San Bernardino, California, and opening fire in America’s worst mass shooting in three years.
The intensive search for clues, extending to Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, could help U.S. investigators piece together what drove Malik and her husband to leave their infant daughter with his mother, don assault-style clothing and carry out the shooting.
Malik, who entered the United States on a fiancée visa, and Farook, the son of immigrant parents from Pakistan who had worked as a health inspector, were killed in a shootout with police just hours after the attack.
U.S. investigators were evaluating evidence that Malik, a Pakistani native who had been living in Saudi Arabia when she married Farook, had pledged allegiance to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, two U.S. government sources said. They said the finding, if confirmed, could be a “game changer” in the probe.
CNN reported that one U.S. official said Malik had made the pledge to al-Baghdadi in a posting on Facebook on Wednesday, the day of the attack, under an account that used a different name.
Though large information gaps remain, it appeared to be the strongest evidence so far that the attack may have been inspired by Islamic State. But U.S. government sources said there was no sign that it had been directed by the militant group, which has seized swathes of Syria and Iraq and claimed the deadly Nov. 13 attacks in Paris.
FATHER BECAME “CONSERVATIVE AND HARDLINE”
Two Pakistani officials said Malik was from Karor Lal Esan, a city on the west coast of the Indus River in southern Punjab province. She moved to Saudi Arabia with her father, an engineer, 25 years ago, they said.
She returned home five or six years ago to study at Bahauddin Zakariya University in Multan to become a pharmacist, they said.
The area in Punjab where she spent her early years and later went to university is a “recruitment ground” and stronghold of Islamist groups with ties to al Qaeda, said Husain Haqqani, a former Pakistani ambassador to the United States. Among the militant groups with a presence there is Lashkar-e-Taiba, which has been blamed for the November 2008 killing spree in the Indian financial capital of Mumbai.
“Our brother changed a lot since he went to Saudi,” Malik’s uncle, Javed Rabbani, said of Malik’s father. “When relatives visited him, they would come back and tell us how conservative and hardline he had become,” he said in an interview with Reuters.
A source close to the Saudi government said that during Malik’s time in Saudi Arabia nothing came to authorities’ attention there that suggested she was involved with radical Islamic groups. Malik was not on any Saudi law enforcement or intelligence watchlist, the source said.
Malik’s father, Gulzar, had built a house in Multan, where he stays when he visits Pakistan, according to another uncle, Malik Anwaar.
He said Gulzar had a falling-out long ago with the rest of the family, citing a dispute over a house among other matters. “We are completely estranged,” Anwaar said.
Rabbani said he had been contacted by Pakistani intelligence as part of the investigation into the San Bernardino shooting.
Malik had two brothers and two sisters and was related to Ahmed Ali Aulak, a former provincial minister, the Pakistani officials said.
The exact circumstances of how Farook and Malik met remained unclear but they had apparently been married for two years. The Federal Bureau of Investigation said Malik was in the United States on a visa under a Pakistani passport.
While Farook had an active presence online, Malik’s digital footprint is harder to trace. A Facebook profile established under an alias by Malik was removed by the company for violating its community standards, which prohibit praise or promotion of “acts of terror,” a spokesman said on Friday.
But her name was attached to a gift registry for their baby hosted by the website TheBump.com. According to the registry, Malik’s baby had been due on May 17.
Just hours before the couple opened fire on Farook’s co-workers in a government building in San Bernardino, they had dropped off their daughter at his mother’s house, telling her they had a doctor’s appointment.
*** How to get that H1 fiancée visa:
New America, Through the Lives of Farook’s Jihad
Coed: Tashfeen Malik is confirmed to be one of the suspects of Wednesday’s shooting at the Inland Regional Center, along with her husband Syed Farook.
Tashfeen —>>> 
Malik is believed to have pledged allegiance to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in a recent Facebook post, however the page is under a different name. Officials did not explain how they knew Malik wrote the post.
UPDATE:
Photos of inside Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik’s house have been released. Two photos show an unidentified female’s passport. The FBI is also officially investigating the shooting as an act of terrorism. According to the FBI director, there is no indication that the couple was part of an organized terrorism group or network.
According to the Daily Mail, Farook clashed with Jewish co-worker Nicholas Thalasinos shortly before the shooting began, and was allegedly the target of disparaging comments concerning “his traditional Muslim appearance.” Thalasinos was one of the numerous victims.
Co-workers also divulged that the two men would frequently discuss religion and politics.
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From the Daily Mail,
Colleague Kuuleme Stephen said that when she had called Thalasinos at work he told her he was having a heated discussion with Farook about Islam who had told him Islam was a peaceful religion and that Americans do not understand Islam.
Thalasinos was known to be passionate about pro-Israel causes and regularly ranted about Islam on Facebook.
On September 11th, 2013, alongside a photo of a shirtless victim plummeting to his death from the burning World Trade Center, Mr Thalasinos posted: ‘On behalf of this guy… You can stick your Million Muslim March up your asses.’
Malik and Farook met on a dating site and had apparently been married for two years. They had a six month old baby who was dropped off at Farook’s mother’s house during the shooting.
Few details are known about Malik other than her age – 27 – and that she was Muslim. According to several sources, she was also a pharmacist and believed to be Pakistani. Her background is currently under investigation.
The 27-year-old was killed during a shootout with police yesterday, which consisted of 21 officers.According to neighbors, a multitude of Middle Eastern individuals were frequently visiting their house at all hours of the day, along with several unknown packages. One neighbor went on the record to say that they didn’t report the suspicious activity for fear of being labeled a racist and Islamophobic.
The above photo is an overhead view of the couple’s house. Police were led to the home from a tip and found the suspects in a dark SUV shortly after arriving. The couple quickly fled and a shootout ensued.During a Wednesday night investigation of the home, police allegedly found 12 pipe bomb-type devices.
A third person also fled from the shooting scene and was detained after an extensive search. It is not immediately clear if they played a role in the massacre.
Evidence suggests that the incident was not spur of the moment. Two handguns were recovered and traced back to her husband, both of which were purchases legally three or four years ago. Two additional rifles were purchased illegally around the same time, however the purchaser is unknown. Authorities suspect a former roommate bought them.
Evidence also shows that the couple was looking to continue on with their rampage. A bag full of “three rudimentary explosive devices packed with black powder and rigged to a remote controlled car “was found inside of the conference room and believed to belong to the couple. Law enforcement stated that the remote for the car was found inside the SUV where Farook and Malik were later killed.”
Her husband was described as a devout Muslim who began growing out his beard over the past year. Both shooters wore a GoPro camera during the shooting, yet there has yet to be mention of actual footage.
Dabiq, Syria: Cubs and Pearls
Cubs and Pearls: A generational war, there is no end.
Dabiq is the sophisticated online magazine for Islamic State. What is Dabiq?
TheGuardian: Dabiq is a small, rather nondescript town in northern Syria, close by the border with Turkey. It’s more of a large village really, with just a few thousand inhabitants.
And it is of limited strategic interest. Not far south, in the sprawling city of Aleppo, where battle rages, Bashar al-Assad continues to drop his untargeted barrel bombs on its Sunni population, thus rallying more and more jihadis to the black flag. Yet it is Dabiq after which Islamic State (Isis) names its glossy recruiting magazine. For this is the place where the world will come to an end.
Like Judaism and Christianity – and strongly influenced by them – Islam has a powerful eschatological strain. It anticipates the end of the world and a final historical confrontation between good and evil, after which human life is set to be miraculously transformed. And according to one reading of Islamic tradition (hadith), the place where this final malahim (apocalypse) will happen is – of all places – Dabiq. This is where the Muslim and Christian armies will finally face each other and the Crusaders will be destroyed. And this is why Dabiq is the name on the lips of Isis recruiting sergeants.
It is worth noting that Isis is extremely selective in its use of hadith. For instance, other parts of the tradition have it that Jesus, dressed in yellow robes, will return east of Damascus and will join forces with the Islamic messiah, the Mahdi, in a battle against the false messiah, the Dajjal. After the death of the Mahdi, it is the Muslim Jesus who will rule the Earth. This hadith is less useful to Isis, though its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, looks to many observers to be trying to style himself as the Mahdi.
The Battle of Marj Dābiq (Arabic: مرج دابق, meaning “the meadow of Dābiq”; Turkish: Mercidabık Muharebesi) was a decisive military clash in Middle Eastern history, fought on 24 August 1516, near the town of Dabiq, 44 km north of Aleppo, Syria.[1] The battle was part of the Ottoman–Mamluk War (1516–17) between the Ottoman Empire and the Mamluk Sultanate, which ended ultimately in an Ottoman victory, the conquest of most of the Middle East by the Ottoman Empire, and the end of the Mamluk Sultanate. The Ottoman Empire’s victory in this battle gave it control of the entire region of Syria.
The Ottoman–Mamluk War of 1516–1517 was the second major conflict between the Egypt-based Mamluk Sultanate and the Ottoman Empire, which led to the fall of the Mamluk Sultanate and the incorporation of the Levant, Egypt and the Arabian Peninsula as provinces of the Ottoman Empire.[1] The war transformed the Ottoman Empire from a realm at the margins of the Islamic world, mainly located in Anatolia and the Balkans, to a huge empire encompassing the traditional lands of Islam, including the cities of Mecca, Cairo, Damascus and Aleppo. It continued to be ruled however from Constantinople
San Bernardino Jihad
Syed Farook was the son of Pakistani divorced parents. Syed’s wife, Tashfeen Malik was also Pakistani. Syed was born in Chicago, raised in Southern California and they met online via a Middle Eastern dating service. Tashfeen arrived in the United States with a Pakistani passport via a (K1)fiancé visa. Syed is a Sunni Muslim according to yet another dating site.
Syed traveled to Saudi Arabia and Pakistan in 2014 and returned in July of 2014. Upon the recent return from Saudi Arabia, Syed grew a beard which is an early gesture of subscribing to jihad. It is uncertain when and if he traveled again to Saudi in 2015, as it has been said he recently returned and subsequently participated in a workplace baby shower and a 2 month long paternity leave. The baby is apparently 6 months old and during the massacre was left with a grandmother.
Syed has a brother with the same first name but a different middle name.
LATimes: Years before he was associated with the deadly mass shooting in San Bernardino, Syed Rizwan Farook endured a turbulent home life, according to court records.
In 2006 divorce filings, his mother detailed a violent marital history in which her children often had to intervene.
Rafia Farook said her husband of 24 years was physically and verbally abusive and was “negligent and an alcoholic,” according to documents filed in Riverside County Superior Court. Her husband, she said, forced her and three of her children to move out. They moved into an Irvine residence.
Later, in multiple requests for domestic-violence protection, Rafia Farook detailed the maltreatment she said she encountered and that her children witnessed: Her husband had once drunkenly dropped a TV on her. Another time, he pushed her toward a car. After a drunken slumber, he shouted expletives and threw dishes in the kitchen.
“Inside the house he tried to hit me. My daughter came in between to save me,” she said about one incident. Police were not called to the home, she said.
“He is always mad,” she said. “Screaming on me, shouting at my kids for no reason. … My son came in between to save me.
When her husband was served with legal separation papers, he was reached at an address in Karachi, Pakistan.
At this time, she said her sons, Syed Raheel Farook, then 23, and Syed Rizwan Farook, then 20, lived with her, along with her younger daughter. Another daughter, Saira, apparently lived elsewhere.
The killer couple were in possession of 4 weapons, all purchased legally, the dates of purchase are unknown. (2) 9mm handguns were purchased by Syed but the long guns were not. The name(s) of the person who purchased the long guns is at this time also unknown. The long guns used .223 rounds.
San Bernardino Police Chief Jarrod Burguan said that Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, fired between 65 and 75 rifle rounds during the shooting at a county health department holiday party, then unloaded about that number in a later confrontation with police.
Syed Farook’s brother-in-law, Farhan Khan appeared almost immediately after the shooting event standing with The Council of American Islamic Relations (CAIR) for a press conference stating this was a shocking event.
There were clustered pipe bombs at the public building where the shooting took place, there were failed pipe bombs in the rented SUV that had Utah tags and there were even more pipe bombs located at the residence.
Syed became radicalized online using social media and phone calls to known terrorists which has been determined after the shooting. Neither were ever on a no-fly list or terror list.