WASHINGTON — A longtime friend of Hillary Clinton told her the deadly attacks on the U.S. mission in Libya had been planned for a month by al-Qaida affiliates and that the attackers used a nearby protest as a cover for the raid.
The message from Sidney Blumenthal, a White House adviser in the Clinton administration, two days after the Sept. 11, 2012, attack, was among dozens he sent her while she was secretary of state, according to emails released Friday by the State Department. Blumenthal’s Sept. 13 memo said that the attackers had planned the assault and then took advantage of the demonstrations — a finding that was at odds with the description initially offered by the White House.
Clinton forwarded to her State Department colleagues many of the emails from Blumenthal who also was advising businesses looking for government contracts in Libya. She sometimes removed his name before the messages were relayed.
Blumenthal’s extensive contacts with the State Department during Clinton’s tenure also show a keen appreciation for politics. He said Republicans could exploit the attacks to try to show that President Barack Obama was weak on national security. Republicans have argued that the Obama administration downplayed the attack’s ties to terrorists for political reasons. The administration says it presented the best intelligence it had.
The State Department released on Friday Hillary Clinton’s emails related to the 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, which a supporter said confirms her account to a committee investigating the incident but Republicans dismissed as “self-selected.”
The 296 emails are a fraction of more than 30,000 work- related messages Clinton, now a Democratic presidential candidate, turned over from the private email account she used while secretary of state in Obama’s first term. Clinton’s use of a private email address and home server has become a focus of a House committee investigating the 2012 attack in Libya. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed in an assault on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi and a nearby CIA outpost.
The Republican chairman of the House Benghazi committee, Rep. Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, said in a statement the emails reflect a “ self-selected” record by Clinton and her lawyers. Gowdy said his panel will continue to push for a broader range of other material and information, and “we will not reach any investigative conclusions until our work is complete.”
At the same time, Gowdy also said, “these emails continue to reinforce the fact that unresolved questions and issues remain as it relates to Benghazi.”
Hillary Clinton was about 15 minutes into a small-business roundtable at the Smuttynose Brewery in Hampton, New Hampshire, when the emails were released.
The six emails dated on the evening of Sept. 11, 2012, show Clinton trying to decide how to announce the ambassador’s death, planning a secure conference call with Obama’s national security adviser, Thomas Donilon.
A former magazine reporter, Blumenthal joined the Clinton White House, and defended President Bill Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal. While he was sending his memos to Secretary Clinton, he was also on the staff of the Clinton Foundation and helping some U.S. military contractors and a former spy looking for contracts in Libya, The New York Times reported.
The State Department said Blumenthal was neither employed nor contracted by the government.
A receptionist at the Clinton Foundation said Blumenthal wasn’t listed in the staff directory now.
“He sent me unsolicited emails, which I passed on in some instances, and I say that that’s just part of the give-and- take,” Clinton told reporters Tuesday in Iowa. “He’s been a friend of mine for a long time.”
Republicans have tried for more than two years and through multiple investigations to prove that Clinton failed to bolster security before the assault, and that she should share blame for the initial, erroneous account by Obama’s administration of what happened in the incident.
Democrats say the Republican investigations focusing on Clinton are inspired by partisan politics. They are criticizing the Republicans for continuing the investigation and keeping Clinton’s potential appearances before the committee open-ended as the 2016 election approaches.
The extent to which Blumenthal may have been operating an unofficial intelligence operation for Clinton as secretary of state has been an emerging line of inquiry for Republicans on the House Benghazi committee in the past couple of months.
Blumenthal this week was called by Gowdy to give a deposition on June 3 about memos he sent Clinton prior the terrorist attacks. The State Department in February provided this group of 296 emails to Gowdy’s panel.
Blumenthal’s emails had been hacked and many of them were released earlier. He didn’t return an email sent to the address listed on the emails, or a message left on a number public records identified as his home telephone.
More than 30,000 Clinton emails have been under review by the State Department. Clinton, who served as the top U.S. diplomat from 2009 until early 2013, has said through her lawyer that another 31,000 emails on her private server that she deemed personal in nature were deleted.
Clinton testified before Congress in January 2013 that there was no attempt by the State Department or Obama administration to mislead the public about the Benghazi attack.
She has said she used a private email account as secretary of state for convenience because she didn’t want to carry multiple email devices. Friday’s release revealed Clinton used at least two different email addresses tied to her private server. The second email name was Hrod17.
A federal judge has ruled that the entire collection of Clinton emails turned over to the State Department must be made public on a rolling basis, rejecting the department’s proposal for a mass release in January.
The Washington Post has posted the Hillary Clinton emails online here.
Bloomberg writer Jennifer Epstein contributed to this report.