Things learned from 50,000-plus pages of Clinton emails

Hillary Clinton's work-
related emails from her private account are now
public, more than 52,000 pages detailing her tenure
as secretary of state but failing to resolve questions
about how she and her closest aides handled
classified information.
Several investigations continue into her exclusive use
of a nongovernment email account and homebrew
server while she was in government, an issue that
has dogged her presidential campaign, even though
she seems well-positioned to capture the Democratic
nomination.
The correspondence between Clinton and her
advisers, friends and political acquaintances offers
no shocking revelations, but it sheds light on a
management style she would take with her to the
White House.
Some of the things we learned:
CLASSIFIED INFORMATION
The emails are full of sections that the State
Department decided were improper for release and
blanked out, ranging from personal information to
national secrets.
In the end, State Department reviewers classified
more than 2,000 emails, mostly at the lower
"confidential" and "secret" levels. Twenty-two emails
were withheld entirely from publication on grounds
that they were "top secret." None of these bore
classification markings at the time they were sent
and most were written by other officials.
Most of the time, Clinton and aides appeared keenly
aware of the limitations of operating over an
unclassified, nongovernment account. Sometimes
they were frustrated by the constraints.
In a February 2010 message, Clinton exclaimed:
"It's a public statement! Just email it." Sent
moments later, the document merely said U.S. and
British officials would cooperate to promote peace.
"Well that is certainly worthy of being top secret,"
Clinton responded sarcastically.
But the State Department's Freedom of Information
Act reviewers found plenty of cases where releasing
the emails in uncensored form today, more than
three years after Clinton left office, would pose
diplomatic or national security concerns.
Many were written by advisers and experts, and
then forwarded to Clinton by one of three close
aides: Cheryl Mills, her chief of staff; Jake Sullivan,
her director of policy planning; and Huma Abedin,
her longtime personal assistant. All three remain in
Clinton's inner circle.
Officials describe Sullivan at the center of the most
sensitive chain, concerning CIA drone strikes. These
were the "top secret" emails the department would
not make public even in heavily censored form.
Other messages show top aides working around the
restrictions.
In February 2010, Abedin writes to Clinton about a
scheduled call with Ecuador's new foreign minister.
Abedin says she is trying to get her boss a "call
sheet," but it's classified.
In June 2011, Clinton tells Sullivan to convert
talking points meant for a secure fax into
"nonpaper" with "no identifying heading and send
nonsecure."
___
HIGH-TECH CHALLENGES
Clinton hardly comes across as a technological whiz.
At one point, she asks her communications adviser
how to charge her iPad and update an app. Asked if
she has wireless Internet, the secretary replies: "I
don't know if I have wi-fi. How do I find out?"
Clinton tells another aide that she is "never sure
which of my emails you receive, so pls let me know
if you receive this one and on which address you
did."
In her final year on the job, she apologizes to
someone for being slow to respond to an email,
describing her BlackBerry as having "a nervous
breakdown on my dime!"
Technological problems included the State
Department's unclassified email system, too.
The department's technology is "so antiquated that
NO ONE uses a State-issued laptop and even high
officials routinely end up using their home email
accounts to be able to get their work done quickly
and effectively," policy chief Anne-Marie Slaughter
laments in 2011.
Mills describes how hackers tried to get into her
account, but says, "I am not sure we want to
telegraph how much folks do or don't do off state
mail b/c it may encourage others who are out there."
In another chain, Clinton asks assistant Nora Toiv
for her email address, prompting Toiv to respond:
"You've always emailed on my State email." Clinton
replied: "Even weirder — I just checked and I do
have your State but not your gmail — so how did
that happen. Must be the Chinese!"
Even though Clinton's home email was unsecure,
she and her aides expressed concern about the
practices of other department officials.
Receiving a long Libya analysis, Clinton asks where
the author works. Sullivan tells her it comes from
one of her employees, and she responds with surprise
that "he used personal account if he is at State."
After a news story appears based on leaked
classified cables, Mills states solemnly: "The leaking
of classified material is a breach not only of trust,
it is also a breach of the law."
___
BENGHAZI
There was no smoking gun.
The congressional investigation into the Sept. 11,
2012, attack on the diplomatic compound in
Benghazi, Libya, may have alerted the public to
Clinton's private account, but the emails themselves
offer little that wasn't already known.
Still, it has provided significant fodder for her
political opponents.
"Two of our officers were killed in Benghazi by an
al-Qaida-like group: The Ambassador, whom I
handpicked, and a young communications officer on
temporary duty w(ith) a wife and two young
children," Hillary Clinton wrote to her daughter,
who used an account under the alias "Diane
Reynolds."
"Very hard day and I fear more of the same
tomorrow," the secretary wrote.
Republicans on the House Benghazi Committee
seized on that email as evidence Clinton quickly saw
the attack as the work of Islamic extremists, not a
spontaneous street protest against an anti-Muslim
video — a description provided by then-U.N.
Ambassador Susan Rice.
Sullivan assured her in later email that she never
echoed that assessment.
"You never said 'spontaneous' or characterized the
motives," he wrote.
A year earlier, after rebels ousted and killed their
longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi, Sullivan
hailed his boss as "the public face" of the U.S.
military intervention. While subsequent emails point
to the growing post-war chaos, none cited a specific
threat against the Benghazi mission.
___
OUTSIDE ADVISERS
An interesting set of characters has Clinton's ear.
No one was more prolific than 2008 campaign
adviser Sid Blumenthal. He was barred from
government by the Obama administration but his
"sbwhoeop" email handle pops up 1,030 times in
Clinton's total email correspondence.
Clinton last year called his would-be intelligence
reports "unsolicited." But she replied to one in
August 2012 with "keep 'em coming."
Many dealt with Libya, apparently written by a
former CIA official with whom Blumenthal
coordinated. Others delved into Afghanistan, Egypt,
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and domestic U.S.
politics. Clinton often asked aides to print out
Blumenthal's advice or forwarded it to key State
Department officials.
Not all were welcome.
"This one strains credulity," Clinton wrote about a
report claiming French and British intelligence
services were trying to cut up Libya. "A thin
conspiracy theory," Sullivan responded. Gene Cretz,
U.S. ambassador there at the time, termed another
such memo "odd."
Blumenthal worked for the Clinton family
foundation and advised entrepreneurs trying to win
contracts from Libya's transitional government, and
his regular missives to the secretary of state suggest
a possible blurring of the lines between personal
relationships and private business ventures. Such
criticism has been levied repeatedly against the
Clintons as they and their friends have reaped tens
of millions of dollars since Bill Clinton's presidency.
But if Blumenthal had favorable access, no email
points to any favors he received.
Plenty of other individuals outside of government
chimed in with advice, solicited or not, for Clinton.
They include trusted holdovers from Bill Clinton's
presidency such as John Podesta, now heading
Hillary Clinton's campaign; think tank officials who
would conceivably join a Hillary Clinton presidency,
such as Neera Tanden, the Center for American
Progress' president; and foreign policy veterans,
including Henry Kissinger.
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, a
frequent interlocutor, praises her for doing the
"Lord's Work." Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu
Kyi of Myanmar asks for technological help. Former
President Jimmy Carter pitches in on North Korea
negotiations.
___
U.S. POLITICS
Domestic politics were never far from Clinton's
mind.
Secretaries of state love to describe themselves as
above politics, but Clinton kept close tabs on
President Barack Obama's health care overhaul, gay
marriage rulings, congressional and presidential
elections, and much more.
She hoped Republicans would put to rest the "
'absurd' death panels argument" during the health
care debate.
With the GOP set to crush Democrats in the 2010
midterm elections, Clinton declared herself
"bewildered" by how poorly her party was delivering
its message. Losing the House, she said, would be a
"disaster in every way."
When longtime Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley
announced he wouldn't run for re-election, Clinton
was "in shock." After asking a childhood friend,
Betsy Ebeling, to share "all insights into this huge
news," Clinton gets a response the next day about
"Rahm rumors everywhere." White House chief of
staff Rahm Emanuel would later become mayor.
Clinton doesn't hold back on Obama's 2012 re-
election campaign, even ascribing nicknames to the
president's potential rivals. Mitt Romney =
"Mittens." Newt Gingrich = "Grinch."
From Clinton's early days as secretary of state,
several emails from her inner circle viewed her public
actions with an eye toward the 2016 election.
In September 2010, communications adviser Philippe
Reines tells Clinton to avoid the furor over a
proposed mosque near the site of the destroyed
World Trade Center in New York.
"You'll be kicking the President when he's down.
Waay down," Reines writes. "There will be a day
you need to publicly disagree with him, but that day
is not Wed, Sep 8, 2010 and that issue is not the
mosque."
___
ROCK STAR DIPLOMAT
Clinton was surrounded by people who cheered her
every move.
"I'm being flooded with emails about how you
rocked," Abedin writes after her boss testified in
January 2013 before two congressional panels on the
Benghazi attack.
She wasn't kidding.
"Twitterverse abuzz with Hillary-kvelling,"
Brookings Institution president Strobe Talbott
wrote, using the Yiddish word for gushing praise.
"You looked fabulous," Abedin chimed in.
After a meme of Clinton reading her BlackBerry
became a sensation, Mills told her boss: "You look
cute."
"DAMN - I LOVE YOU!" wrote Capricia Marshall
when Obama nominated the longtime Clinton
supporter for State Department protocol chief.
"Thank you for holding firm for me ___ always in
my foxhole! xxooo"
Former policy chief Slaughter provides many of the
most obvious examples.
"I have NEVER been prouder of having worked for
you," she tells Clinton in March 2011, as the U.S.
intervened in Libya. "Turning POTUS around on
this is a major win for everything we have worked
for."
"Please tell HRC that she was a ROCK STAR
yesterday," Slaughter tells Sullivan after the
Benghazi sessions, having since left office.
Political consultant Mark Penn was a lone
dissenter, suggesting Republicans could use one
moment where she pounded the desk in frustration
as evidence she was rattled.
Communications adviser Philippe Reines leapt to
Clinton's defense:
"Give
Me
A
Break
You did not look rattled. You looked real. There's a
difference. A big one."
Sullivan said Penn gave her the same advice in her
losing 2008 presidential campaign. Clinton replied,
"BINGO!"
___
SENSE OF HUMOR
Clinton likes a good laugh.
So often buttoned-down on the campaign trail or
diplomatic circuit, her sense of humor pours forth in
emails.
When Afghanistan looks at a stricter code of
conduct for women, she writes: "WHAT??? Or, more
to the point, WTF??"
Clinton tries in February 2010 to call the White
House herself, only to reach a disbelieving operator.
She resigns to calling "like a proper and properly
dependent Secretary of State — no independent
dialing allowed."
She tells Reines, disappointed to be uninvited to an
all-woman gathering, that his "message cannot go
through this female-only channel which is required
to operate in perpetuity in a vain attempt to balance
the gender scales. Try again in the next millennium.
Thank you for your understanding."
And after receiving the colorful complaints of a
former Capitol colleague, Sen. Barbara Mikulski of
Maryland, Clinton offers empathy, referencing the
musical, "The Music Man": "Oh, Barb, we got
trouble w a capital "T'' in River City."
"Keep going," she tells Mikulski, invoking their
"home girl" Harriet Tubman, the runaway slave.
At 6 p.m. on New Year's Eve, Clinton asks an aide:
"Anything else I need to know before this year
ends?"