The State Department performed one of their weekend document dumps, releasing another 550 Hillary Clinton emails—more than 1000 pages. They also reclassified another 84 emails, bringing the total number of sensitive communications that had no business being on a private server to more than 1700.
While the vast majority of the messages now considered classified are designated at the lowest level—”Confidential”—as closely-held diplomatic communications, State deemed three messages in the latest batch to warrant protection at the more sensitive “Secret” level.
One of those appeared to deal with fallout from the U.S. military and CIA raid that killed Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan, on May 2, 2011. The message indicates that then-Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) was trying to reach Clinton by phone after a day of intense diplomacy aimed at calming the Pakistani government’s anger over the U.S. government’s covert bin Laden attack.
“Cameron called me, hysterical,” State policy planning chief Jake Sullivan wrote to Clinton on May 16, 2011, referring to U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Cameron Munter, who accompanied Kerry at high-level talks in Islamabad that day. A phrase in the middle of the email is redacted before Sullivan adds, “That is likely what Kerry is talking about.”
“Can you get me the facts (such as they are) before I talk with Kerry?” Clinton replied.
At the time, there were fears that Pakistan would try to keep a stealth helicopter used in the raid and abandoned at bin Laden’s compound. There were also reports that Pakistan was giving China access to the remains of the high-tech U.S. chopper.
The other “Secret” messages in Saturday’s release relate to a cross-border attack from Egypt’s Sinai peninsula into Israel in August 2012 and to views veteran diplomat Dennis Ross shared with Clinton in September 2012 at a time of tension in U.S.-Israel relations. Another copy of that message was released in heavily-redacted form last month.
The Clinton campaign continues to insist that a cabal of anti-Clinton intelligence and State Department officials are conspiring to smear her. It’s amazing that many of her slack-jawed, mouth breathing, drooling supporters buy that explanation.
There are at least 100 FBI agents running around looking for criminal behavior that they can tie to Hillary Clinton. Today’s document dump reminds us they don’t have to look very hard or very far to find it.
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