This Article is From Sep 02, 2015

Emails Show How Hillary Clinton Valued Input From Sidney Blumenthal

Emails Show How Hillary Clinton Valued Input From Sidney Blumenthal

File Photo: Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. (Agence France-Presse)

Washington: As secretary of state, Hillary Rodham Clinton had access to the latest information and analysis from the nation's premier intelligence agencies, from a corps of seasoned diplomats reporting back from every corner of the world, from a range of foreign policy experts in and out of government. And from Sidney Blumenthal.

A former journalist, White House official and longtime confidant of Clinton's, Blumenthal became a frequent correspondent and tipster during her time in President Barack Obama's cabinet, passing along news articles, inside information, political gossip, election polls, geopolitical advice and sheer speculation in a steady drumbeat of emails, according to documents released by the State Department.

In addition to memos on Libya that have drawn attention, Blumenthal weighed in freely on events in Britain, Northern Ireland, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Iran, China, Greece, Mexico, Italy and even Kyrgyzstan, becoming a sort of unofficial early warning service for the secretary on the far-flung issues that confronted her.

He also served as an informer on domestic politics, keeping her up-to-date on the latest machinations in the White House and the campaign trail, even offering suggestions for midterm election strategy.

Blumenthal, in fact, was so prolific in his messages to "H," as he addressed her, that he seems to be the person she heard from by email the most outside her department. Of the 4,368 emails and documents, mostly from 2010, that were posted on the State Department website Monday night in response to a court order, a search found that 306 involved messages from Blumenthal to Clinton or vice versa.

Clinton was usually terse and revealed little in reply, but she indicated that she and former President Bill Clinton welcomed his input outside the normal chain of command.

"I shared your emails w Bill who thought they were 'brilliant'!" she wrote after a series of messages about elections in Britain. "Keep 'em coming when you can."

When he was slow with a promised memo, she nudged him. "Are you still sending?" Other messages referred to late-night phone conversations.

Blumenthal's assessments were at times bracing, especially regarding U.S. politics. In one message, he referred to House Speaker John A. Boehner as "that old scandal ridden hack Republican."

In another, he said younger Republican lawmakers "despised" Boehner. "They are repelled by his personal behavior," he wrote. "He is louche, alcoholic, lazy, and without any commitment to any principle."

In several messages, Blumenthal argued that Democrats should present Boehner as the face of the Republican Party during the 2010 midterm elections. "Making Boehner the GOP poster child should be systematic and relentless," he wrote.

Clinton, who as the nation's chief diplomat publicly stayed out of the campaign, never responded to such suggestions in the emails that were released. But she clearly followed the elections carefully as Democrats were headed to a blowout defeat.

"I'm on a plane on the way to Papua New Guinea for the next 6 hours so pls email me results as you get them," she wrote to Blumenthal on Election Day. "Needless to say, I'm so distressed over all of this."

In another message, Blumenthal forwarded a memo from David Brock, a pro-Clinton political activist, with the subject line "Memo on Impeaching Clarence Thomas," the Supreme Court justice, highlighting what he considered new evidence that conflicted with Thomas' testimony during his original confirmation hearings.

Blumenthal passed along political intelligence liberally. He said "Republican sources" had told him that Karl Rove predicted that the party would nominate Mitt Romney and Haley Barbour, then the governor of Mississippi, in 2012. He said an acquaintance had dinner with Gen. David H. Petraeus, "who freely talked about running for president."

And he offered a scathing assessment of Martha Coakley, the Democrat running for Senate in Massachusetts, who was "not a very good candidate, dull, dutiful, rote."

The emails posted Monday, along with previous batches disclosed by the State Department, shed light on a relationship that has already drawn scrutiny from Republicans in Congress investigating the terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya.

While not a State Department employee, Blumenthal was being paid by Bill Clinton's foundation as well as by advocacy organizations that have advanced Hillary Clinton's political interests.

Blumenthal has been a figure of much interest for years in Clinton circles. He became a trusted adviser to Clinton when she was first lady and a chief defender of her and her husband against what she once called the "vast right-wing conspiracy." He was viewed suspiciously by other Clinton aides for his conspiratorial bent, nicknamed by some "G.K.," for grassy knoll.

As Obama's White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, a Clinton veteran, blocked an effort to hire Blumenthal at the State Department.

But even if she could not put him on her staff, Clinton clearly valued his input, at least to a degree, and at times used him as a conduit to foreign officials, particularly in Britain, where he has extensive contacts in Labour Party circles and referred to top officials like Gordon Brown, then the prime minister, by their first names.

In some of the emails, he arranged a dinner for Clinton, himself and Shaun Woodward, then Britain's top official on Northern Ireland.

During elections that deposed Brown, Blumenthal reported real-time results from London, even informing Clinton when the prime minister was heading to meet with the queen to step down.

"Alas, poor Gordon, Heathcliffe, unloved, unlovable, suffering," Blumenthal wrote.

Blumenthal's advice ranged widely. After Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of Italy was attacked by a man in a square, Blumenthal recommended that Obama call to wish him well.

He urged a strong stance on Middle East peace negotiations.

"Without 'tough love,' any support for Israel will lack credibility," he wrote.
He offered his own cheeky translation of an Iranian statement, saying it really meant: "Oh, how we miss George Bush! He was such an easy target."

Blumenthal regularly forwarded articles by his son, the journalist Max Blumenthal, and intervened on behalf of some people with Clinton.

He urged her to give an interview to the author James Mann, who was writing a history of Democratic foreign policy, and he urged intervention when Israel barred the prominent scholar Noam Chomsky from entering the West Bank.

"He is a U.S. citizen barred for his political views, after all," Blumenthal wrote.

He was also her outlet on some of the old battles that reached back to her days in Arkansas as the wife of an up-and-coming Democrat.

When Jim Johnson, a former segregationist, State Supreme Court justice and longtime foe of the Clintons, died, Blumenthal sent her an obituary.

"What a sad ending to the tale," Clinton wrote.

Blumenthal did not seem sad. He wrote back to compare Johnson to a Confederate who "blew his brains out" after Appomattox.

"Unfortunately, the evil Justice Jim did lives on - in the wild bigotry against Obama and even through the Supreme Court decision in the case of Citizens United, a group he helped galvanize to circulate the Whitewater hoax."

Blumenthal made a point of passing along articles and rumors that suggested disarray in the White House of Clinton's former primary rival. He sent her a poll showing her with a higher approval rating than the president and a column urging Obama to fire Emanuel, which she then forwarded to a top aide with an "fyi."

He passed along a gossipy piece reporting that Michelle Obama had supposedly told Carla Bruni, the wife of the former French president Nicolas Sarkozy, that life in the White House was "hell."

In October 2010, just weeks before the Democratic midterm defeat, Blumenthal sent along a column by the political analyst Mark Halperin saying that Washington elites of both parties had concluded that "the White House is in over its head, isolated, insular, arrogant and clueless about how to get along with or persuade members of Congress, the media, the business community or working-class voters."

Blumenthal added his own verdict. While much of the article was "twaddle," he said, its central conclusion was "completely accurate in assessment."
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