Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Clinton email set released, censored
U.S. safety cited in 64 redactions
WASHINGTON — Dozens of emails that traversed Hillary Clinton’s private, unsecured home server contain national security information now deemed too sensitive to make public, according to the latest batch of records released Friday.
In 2,206 pages of emails, the government censored passages to protect national security at least 64 times in 37 messages, including instances in which the same information was blacked out multiple times. Clinton has said she never sent classified information from her private email server at her home in New York.
The Friday release brings the volume of emails publicly released by the State Department to roughly 12 percent of the 55,000 pages Clinton had turned over to department lawyers earlier this year.
That falls short of the 15 percent goal set by a court ruling in May, a lag the State Department attributed to interest by the inspector general of the U.S. intelligence community in the possible compromise of classified information.
There were no stunning revelations in the emails released Friday, which reflected the workaday business of government. Many of the emails focused on personnel matters, such as hiring a new speechwriter and discussion of a person — whose name was redacted — who had sought an ambassador post.
The messages also gave Clinton updates on action in Congress, such as confirmation votes for ambassadors and Senate votes in December 2009 on the Affordable Care Act.
“This evening cloture was invoked on the motion to proceed to Majority Leader [ Harry] Reid’s health care bill, 60 to 39. It was a straight party-line vote,” wrote Miguel Rodriguez, who at the time was deputy assistant secretary of state. “Despite some early concern over how they would vote, Senators Ben Nelson, [Mary] Landrieu, and [Blanche] Lincoln voted with the caucus.”
Clinton, who had attempted to help formulate U. S. health care policy since her time as first lady, appears to have lobbied on behalf of the Affordable Care Act.
“Think your calls to House members made all the difference,” then-Assistant Secretary of State for Legislative Affairs Richard Verma wrote to Clinton on Nov. 7, 2009. “Close, but good result.”
Aides were also keeping Clinton informed on politics in the states. One informed her that Bill de Blasio — a former Clinton aide — had won his 2009 primary runoff for New York City public advocate and passed along his mobile phone number, which was redacted.
In other emails, Clinton’s team occasionally scoffed at the notion that there was still tension left over from the 2008 presidential race between her State Department and President Barack Obama’s team in the White House.
“Just shows you that it’s near impossible to take issue with the job you’re doing it, which is why the political reporters have to resort to the manufactured drama of interactions with the WH,” communications adviser Philippe Reines wrote in September 2009 after Clinton remarked on positive media coverage.
Even going to a funeral was work for Clinton. She wrote that she returned from the farewell to Sen. Ted Kennedy with a list of “people I saw at funeral who I want to see or who want to see me.” They included Randi Weingarten of the American Federation of Teachers, Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California and actor-politician Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich — a Republican who sparred with President Bill Clinton — sent Hillary Clinton’s staff a report on a 2009 trip to Japan, saying her visit had “made a big impact.”
Other messages reflect the big and small of foreign diplomacy. In August 2009, Clinton emailed about a 10-year-old Yemeni girl who had been married and divorced and had been portrayed as unhappy in a CNN story.
“Is there any way we can help her? Could we get her to the US for counselling and education?” Clinton asked an aide, who began making calls.
Other messages in 2009, from former national security adviser Sandy Berger to Clinton, asked how to pressure Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over negotiations with Palestinians.
Some emails show the extent to which her closest aides managed the details of her image. Top Clinton aide Huma Abedin, for example, sent her an early-morning message in August 2009 advising her to “wear a dark color today. Maybe the new dark green suit. Or blue.” Clinton later had a joint news conference with the Jordanian foreign minister. She wore the green suit.
CLASSIFIED INFORMATION
There is also the matter of the classified information that found its way onto her insecure email system.
Memos sent by the inspector general of the intelligence community alerted the FBI to a potential security violation arising from Clinton’s use of a private server located in her home.
The inspector general said his office has found four emails containing classified information while reviewing a limited sample of 40 of the emails provided by Clinton. Those four messages were not marked as classified but should have been handled as such because they contained classified information at the time they were sent, the inspector general said.
Among Clinton’s exchanges now censored as classified by the State Department was a brief exchange in October 2009 between her and Jeffrey Feltman, then assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs.
Clinton emailed Feltman about an “Egyptian proposal” for separate signings of a reconciliation deal with Hamas after the militant organization balked at attending a unity ceremony. Both Clinton’s email and Feltman’s response are marked B-1 for “classified” and completely censored from the email release.
A longer email sent the same day from Clinton to former Sen. George Mitchell, then the special envoy for Middle East Peace, is also censored as classified despite the fact that Clinton did not send the original message on a secure channel. Mitchell later responded to Clinton that “the Egyptian document has been received and is being translated.”
Other now-secret material involved a battle over whom to appoint as the head of the United Nations cultural agency.
The September 2009 issue was over the candidacy of an Egyptian official who had once threatened to burn Israeli books. Abedin on Sept. 22 forwarded to Clinton a chain of emails from department staff summing up the maneuvering over the issue. One sentence in that chain was redacted, with a code for national security interests as the stated reason.
The emails released Friday raised new questions about Clinton’s stated reason for routing all her work-related emails through a private server. On several occasions, Clinton received messages not only at her home email server — hdr22clintonemail.com — but also on a BlackBerry email account through her cellphone provider.
In March, a Clinton spokesman said the only reason Clinton had her own account is because she “wanted the simplicity of using one device” and “opted to use her personal email account as a matter of convenience.”
There has been no indication from emails released so far that Clinton’s home computer system used encryption software that would have protected her communications from hackers or any other interested parties on the Internet.
Clinton has repeatedly defended her email usage, saying her private server had “numerous safeguards” and placing responsibility for releasing the documents on the State Department.
“They’re the ones that are bearing the responsibility to sort through these thousands and thousands of emails and determine at what pace they can be released,” she said after meeting with labor leaders Thursday in Maryland. “I really hope that it will be as quickly as possible.”
Sens. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Ron Johnson, R-Wis., chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, said they were concerned that Clinton’s attorney, David Kendall, apparently holds thousands of Clinton’s emails — including some that may contain classified information — on a thumb drive at his Washington office.
Grassley wrote a letter to FBI Director James Comey asking him to explain what the FBI is doing to ensure that classified information contained on Kendall’s thumb drive is secured and not further disseminated.
Earlier this year, in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, a district court judge mandated that the agency release batches of Clinton’s private correspondence from her time as secretary of state every 30 days starting June 30.
The goal is for the department to publicly unveil all 55,000 pages of her emails by Jan. 29, 2016 — three days before Iowa caucus-goers cast the first votes in the Democratic presidential contest.
Previous emails released by the agency revealed that Clinton received information on her private account about the deadly 2012 attack on U.S. diplomatic facilities in Benghazi, Libya, that was retroactively classified as “secret” at the request of the FBI.
The State Department this week turned over to the committee 8,254 pages of new Benghazi-related documents that aren’t Clinton emails. The panel is starting to review that information.
At Clinton’s Oct. 22 scheduled appearance before the Benghazi committee, members are set to question her about Benghazi and her email arrangement as secretary as it relates to the committee’s investigation, committee spokesman Jamal Ware said in a statement.