When
the Clintons last occupied the White House, Sidney Blumenthal cast
himself in varied roles: speechwriter, in-house intellectual and press
corps whisperer. Republicans added another, accusing Mr. Blumenthal of
spreading gossip to discredit Republican investigators, and forced him
to testify during President Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial.
Now, as Hillary Rodham Clinton
embarks on her second presidential bid, Mr. Blumenthal’s service to the
Clintons is again under the spotlight. Representative Trey Gowdy of
South Carolina, a Republican who is leading the congressional committee
investigating the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya, plans to subpoena Mr.
Blumenthal, 66, for a private transcribed interview.
Mr.
Gowdy’s chief interest, according to people briefed on the inquiry, is a
series of memos that Mr. Blumenthal — who was not an employee of the
State Department — wrote to Mrs. Clinton about events unfolding in Libya
before and after the death of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. According to
emails obtained by The New York Times, Mrs. Clinton, who was secretary
of state at the time, took Mr. Blumenthal’s advice seriously, forwarding
his memos to senior diplomatic officials in Libya and Washington and at
times asking them to respond. Mrs. Clinton continued to pass around his
memos even after other senior diplomats concluded that Mr. Blumenthal’s
assessments were often unreliable.
But
an examination by The Times suggests that Mr. Blumenthal’s involvement
was more wide-ranging and more complicated than previously known,
embodying the blurry lines between business, politics and philanthropy
that have enriched and vexed the Clintons and their inner circle for
years.
While
advising Mrs. Clinton on Libya, Mr. Blumenthal, who had been barred
from a State Department job by aides to President Obama, was also
employed by her family’s philanthropy, the Clinton Foundation, to help
with research, “message guidance” and the planning of commemorative
events, according to foundation officials. During the same period, he
also worked on and off as a paid consultant to Media Matters and
American Bridge, organizations that helped lay the groundwork for Mrs.
Clinton’s 2016 campaign.
Much
of the Libya intelligence that Mr. Blumenthal passed on to Mrs. Clinton
appears to have come from a group of business associates he was
advising as they sought to win contracts from the Libyan transitional
government. The venture, which was ultimately unsuccessful, involved
other Clinton friends, a private military contractor and one former
C.I.A. spy seeking to get in on the ground floor of the new Libyan
economy.
The
projects — creating floating hospitals to treat Libya’s war wounded and
temporary housing for displaced people, and building schools — would
have required State Department permits, but foundered before the
business partners could seek official approval.
It
is not clear whether Mrs. Clinton or the State Department knew of Mr.
Blumenthal’s interest in pursuing business in Libya; a State Department
spokesman declined to say. Many aspects of Mr. Blumenthal’s involvement
in the planned Libyan venture remain unclear. He declined repeated
requests to discuss it.
But
interviews with his associates and a review of previously unreported
correspondence suggest that — once again — it may be difficult to
determine where one of Mr. Blumenthal’s jobs ended and another began.
Mr.
Gowdy’s committee on the attacks in Benghazi hopes to ask Mr.
Blumenthal who, if anyone, was paying him to prepare the memos for Mrs.
Clinton and whether they were among his responsibilities at the Clinton
Foundation. The committee’s investigators are also interested in whether
the planned business venture in Libya posed any potential conflicts for
Mr. Blumenthal or Mrs. Clinton, whose aides the business partners
sought meetings with in early 2012.
The
Libya venture came together in 2011 when David L. Grange, a retired
Army major general, joined with a newly formed New York firm,
Constellations Group, to pursue business leads in Libya. Constellations
Group, led by a professional fund-raiser and philanthropist named Bill
White, was to provide the leads. Mr. Grange’s company, Osprey Global
Solutions, based in North Carolina, would put “boots on the ground to
see if there was an opportunity to do business,” Mr. Grange said in an
interview.
Inside the Documents
What Sidney Blumenthal’s memos to Hillary Clinton said,
and how they were handled: In 2011 and 2012, Mrs. Clinton received at
least 25 memos about Libya from Mr. Blumenthal, many of which were
passed on to her aides.
The
men had little experience in Libya. Exactly how Mr. White was to
procure leads in Libya is unclear. He spent much of his career as an
executive at the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum, and had raised
money for politicians, businesses and charities. His biography
also describes Mr. White as a consultant for Aquahydrate, a
bottled-water company whose backers include Ron Burkle, the billionaire
investor who had been a close friend of the Clintons.
“We
were thinking, ‘O.K., Qaddafi is dead, or about to be, and there’s
opportunities,’ ” Mr. White said in a brief telephone interview. He
added, “We thought, ‘Let’s try to see who we know there.’ ”
Mr.
White declined to answer follow-up questions about what role Mr.
Blumenthal was playing in the business venture. But Mr. Grange described
Mr. Blumenthal as an adviser to Mr. White’s company, along with two
other associates: Tyler Drumheller, a colorful former Central
Intelligence Agency official, and Cody Shearer, a longtime Clinton
friend.
“I just know that he was working with the team to work on business development,” Mr. Grange said of Mr. Blumenthal.
In
the spring of 2011, Mr. Blumenthal, Mr. Drumheller and Mr. Shearer were
helping plan what was to be Mr. Grange’s first trip to Libya, according
to emails stolen by a Romanian hacker and published by Gawker and ProPublica in March.
Mr. Blumenthal said he had been advised not to comment on the
correspondence because the theft remained under investigation by the
F.B.I.
In
August, Mr. Grange signed a memorandum of understanding with two senior
officials in the Libyan transitional government to provide
“humanitarian assistance, medical services and disaster mitigation,”
along with helping to train a new national police force.
The
agreement fell apart, Mr. Grange said, but the partners continued to
seek other projects in Libya, including a proposal to create the
floating hospitals to treat the country’s war wounded. But doing
business there proved difficult: Some Libyan leaders were wary about
working with Western companies, while the contractors could not figure
out whom to make deals with.
“It
was just so factionalized over there,” Mr. Grange said. “You never knew
who to believe or trust, or know who was in charge of what.”
Even
as their plans sputtered, Mr. Blumenthal continued to draw on the
business associates for information about Libya as he shaped his memos
to Mrs. Clinton. Sometimes the two realms became blurred.
In
January 2012, for example, Mr. Blumenthal sent Mrs. Clinton a memo
describing efforts by the new Libyan prime minister to stabilize his
fragile government by bringing in advisers with experience dealing with
Western companies and governments.
Among
“the most influential of this group,” Mr. Blumenthal wrote, was a man
named Najib Obeida, who worked at the fledgling Libyan stock exchange.
Mrs. Clinton had the memo forwarded to her senior State Department
staff.
What
Mr. Blumenthal did not mention was that Mr. Obeida was one of the
Libyan officials Mr. Grange and his partners hoped would finance the
humanitarian projects. The day before Mr. Blumenthal emailed Mrs.
Clinton, Mr. Grange wrote to a senior Clinton aide at the State
Department to introduce the venture with Mr. Obeida in Libya and seek an
audience with the United States ambassador there. Mr. Grange said he
had not received a reply.
Mr.
Blumenthal sent Mrs. Clinton at least 25 memos about Libya in 2011 and
2012, many describing elaborate intrigues among various foreign
governments and rebel factions.
Mrs.
Clinton circulated them, frequently forwarding them to Jake Sullivan,
her well-regarded deputy chief of staff, and requesting that he
distribute them to other State Department officials. Mr. Sullivan often
sent the memos to senior officials in Libya, including the ambassador,
J. Christopher Stevens, who was killed in the 2012 attacks in Benghazi.
In
many cases, Mr. Sullivan would paste the text from the memos into an
email and tell the other State Department officials that they had come
from an anonymous “contact” of Mrs. Clinton.
Some
of Mr. Blumenthal’s memos urged Mrs. Clinton to consider rumors that
other American diplomats knew at the time to be false. Not infrequently,
Mrs. Clinton’s subordinates replied to the memos with polite
skepticism.
In
April 2012, Mr. Stevens took issue with a Blumenthal memo raising the
prospect that the Libyan branch of the Muslim Brotherhood was poised to
make gains in the coming parliamentary elections. The Brotherhood fared
poorly in the voting.
Another
American diplomat read the memo, noting that Mrs. Clinton’s source
appeared to have confused Libyan politicians with the same surname.
Mrs.
Clinton herself sometimes seemed skeptical. After reading a March 2012
memo from Mr. Blumenthal, describing a plan by French and British
intelligence officials to encourage tribal leaders in eastern Libya to
declare a “semiautonomous” zone there, Mrs. Clinton wrote to Mr.
Sullivan, “This one strains credulity.”
Mr. Sullivan agreed, telling Mrs. Clinton, “It seems like a thin conspiracy theory.”
But
the skepticism did not seem to sour Mrs. Clinton on Mr. Blumenthal. She
continued to forward Mr. Blumenthal’s memos, often appending a note:
“Useful insight” or “We should get this around asap.”
In
an August 2012 memo, Mr. Blumenthal described the new president of
Libya, Mohamed Magariaf, as someone who would “seek a discrete
relationship with Israel” and had “many common friends and associates
with the leaders of Israel.”
“If true, this is encouraging,” Mrs. Clinton wrote to Mr. Sullivan. “Should consider passing to Israelis.”
The
emails suggest that Mr. Blumenthal’s direct line to Mrs. Clinton
circumvented the elaborate procedures established by the federal
government to ensure that high-level officials are provided with vetted
assessments of available intelligence.
Former
intelligence officials said it was not uncommon for top officials,
including secretaries of state, to look outside the intelligence
bureaucracy for information and advice. But Paul R. Pillar, a former
C.I.A. official who is now a researcher at the Center for Security
Studies at Georgetown University, said Mr. Blumenthal’s dispatches went
beyond that sort of informal channel, aping the style of official
government intelligence reports but without assessments of the motives
of sources.
“The
sourcing is pretty sloppy,” Mr. Pillar added, “in a way that would
never pass muster if it were the work of a reports officer at a U.S.
intelligence agency.”
Jo Becker and Amy Chozick
contributed reporting from New York, and David Kirkpatrick from Cairo.
Alain Delaquérière and Elisa Cho contributed research.
Follow The New York Times Politics and Washington on Facebook and Twitter, and sign up for the First Draft politics newsletter.
A version of this article appears in print on May 19, 2015, on page A17 of the New York edition with the headline: Clinton Friend’s Memos on Libya Draw Scrutiny to Politics and Business.
Update: (NYT) Clinton Friend’s Memos on Libya Draw Scrutiny to Politics and Business
Who gave Blumenthal these classified documents? I seem to remember a recent federal prosecution for passing along classified documents.
Relevant Federal Code: 18 U.S. Code § 798 – Disclosure of classified information
(a) Whoever knowingly and willfully communicates, furnishes, transmits, or otherwise makes available to an unauthorized person, or publishes, or uses in any manner prejudicial to the safety or interest of the United States or for the benefit of any foreign government to the detriment of the United States any classified information—
via Associated Press Threatens Legal Action Over Request for Hillary Clinton Information – NYTimes.com.
Did Blumenthal have US Classified documents?
When the Clintons last occupied the White House, Sidney Blumenthal cast himself in varied rolesUpdate (ProPublica):Private Emails Reveal Ex-Clinton Aide’s Secret Spy Network
..
Representative Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, a Republican who is leading the congressional committee investigating the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya, plans to subpoena Mr. Blumenthal, 66, for a private transcribed interview.
..
According to emails obtained by The New York Times, Mrs. Clinton, who was secretary of state at the time, took Mr. Blumenthal’s advice seriously, forwarding his memos to senior diplomatic officials in Libya and Washington and at times asking them to respond. Mrs. Clinton continued to pass around his memos even after other senior diplomats concluded that Mr. Blumenthal’s assessments were often unreliable.
Blumenthal, Grange, and Kikhia all did not respond to repeated attempts to reach them. Nick Merrill, a spokesman for Clinton had no comment on Blumenthal’s activities with Drumheller.Update (WaTimes): Another mystery about Hillary’s private email
Did Mr. Blumenthal ever get a security clearance? Mrs. Clinton’s closest aide, Huma Abedin, never did, and when five Republican members of Congress asked State’s inspector general for the reason, they were pummeled by Democrats, the press, and some fellow Republicans.Update: Was Hillary Clinton running her own rogue intel operation?
If Mrs. Clinton had an off-the-books arrangement with Messrs. Blumenthal and Drumheller, it could have jeopardized national security. We have a right to know what it was, what purpose it served, at whose behest, how it guided her as secretary, and what, if any, payments were made to the parties involved.
If she did not have an association with Messrs. Blumenthal and Drumheller, she should be willing to disclose all of her communications.
Courtesy: Nashua Police Department
Relevant Federal Code: 18 U.S. Code § 798 – Disclosure of classified information
(a) Whoever knowingly and willfully communicates, furnishes, transmits, or otherwise makes available to an unauthorized person, or publishes, or uses in any manner prejudicial to the safety or interest of the United States or for the benefit of any foreign government to the detriment of the United States any classified information—
- (1) concerning the nature, preparation, or use of any code, cipher, or cryptographic system of the United States or any foreign government; or
- (2) concerning the design, construction, use, maintenance, or repair of any device, apparatus, or appliance used or prepared or planned for use by the United States or any foreign government for cryptographic or communication intelligence purposes; or
- (3) concerning the communication intelligence activities of the United States or any foreign government; or
- (4) obtained
by the processes of communication intelligence from the communications
of any foreign government, knowing the same to have been obtained by
such processes—
Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.
The memos to Clinton carried titles like “Comprehensive Intel Report on Libya,” and included all-cap warnings that, “THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION COMES FROM EXTREMELY SENSITIVE SOURCES AND SHOULD BE HANDLED WITH CARE.” Blumenthal has not held a public post since leaving his White House job in January 2001.It appears that Hillary was the World Traveling Face, and Sidney was doing all the reading and paperwork.
Each memo included a note on the sources of intelligence included in the document. One typical memo referred to “Sources with access to the highest levels of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the leadership of the Armed Forces, and Western Intelligence, diplomatic, and security services.”
–Who in Gvt provided and emailed classified documents to Blumenthal?
In 2012, when Congressional investigators sought documents related to the attack on the United States diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, they were initially not supplied with emails from Mrs. Clinton’s private account. In 2013, Gawker submitted a Freedom of Information Act request seeking correspondence between Mrs. Clinton and a close adviser, Sidney Blumenthal. Though some of that correspondence had been made public already, the State Department told Gawker that it could find no records responsive to the request, Gawker reported.
–Huma Abedin…. oh yea! You mean Mrs. Huma Abedin-Weiner. Right. Dick-n-Twitter‘s wife. Did Mrs. Abedin-Weiner ever receive a security clearance?
In its requests, the AP asked for her full schedules and calendars and for details on the State Department’s decision to grant a special position to a longtime Clinton aide, Huma Abedin, among other documents. The oldest request, the news organization said, was made in March 2010.
via Associated Press Threatens Legal Action Over Request for Hillary Clinton Information – NYTimes.com.
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