http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/blumenthals-state-dept.-role-went-far-beyond-libya/article/2567385Blumenthal's State Dept. role went far beyond Libya
By Sarah Westwood | July 1, 2015 | 1:19 am
New emails released by the State Department late Tuesday reveal a controversial aide played a much larger role in advising Hillary Clinton than the former secretary of state originally suggested.
Sidney Blumenthal, a Clinton confidante whose potential employment at the State Department was nixed by Obama administration officials, advised Clinton on the content of her speeches, on political developments in a number of countries and even on how her policies were playing in the international press.
The new records, all sent during Clinton's first year in office, indicate Blumenthal's advisory role went far beyond the informal intelligence memos he prepared for her about Libya. In fact, the emails suggest Blumenthal performed the duties of a full-time State Department staffer, despite being on the payroll of the Clinton Foundation during the same time period.
What's more, his open criticism of President Obama's foreign policy underscores the fear White House aides expressed when denying Clinton her request to hire Blumenthal at the start of her tenure.
Blumenthal briefed Clinton about the upcoming British elections in May, for example. He suggested ways to approach Iranian protests in June. He advised Clinton to step up trade efforts with the European Union in November.
In another memo from late November, Blumenthal even stoked concerns about NATO's dwindling appetite for the war in Afghanistan by advising her that "the Western alliance is near-broken."
"Your trip to NATO will be the final call on Afghanistan. Whatever you scrap together there will be the remains of the day," Blumenthal said. "There will be no more. The spare change in troops you pick up will be the close-out deal. The Europeans will be less amenable to contributions in the future than the House Democratic Caucus."
In the same email, Blumenthal blamed Britain's "shattered" relationship with the U.S. on "the Obama administration's denigration of the UK," which he attributed to the lingering effects of President George W. Bush.
Blumenthal told Clinton "everyone" in the British government thought "Obama's indecision" and indifference was "damaging to British interest."
"The US administration is considered blinkered, parochial and counter-productive," he said.
"Therefore, you might contemplate a brief trip to London," Blumenthal advised.
Clinton did indeed travel to London weeks later, travel records show.
In another memo, sent in November, Clinton forwarded talking points Blumenthal had prepared for her ahead of a speech in Berlin marking the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall.
"The speechwriting crew is taking Sid's points below and massaging them into a set of remarks," Jake Sullivan, deputy chief of staff, assured Clinton.
"The Berlin event is personally meaningful for me, not least because I was, in 1986, when I was a reporter for the Washington Post, detained and held in a cell inside the Berlin Wall," Blumenthal informed Clinton.
In December, Blumenthal pressed Clinton to advise President Obama on how he should handle a call to Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi after he was assaulted after a rally in Milan. Clinton forwarded the suggestions to other aides and even requested that the memo be printed.
Blumenthal advised Clinton in early November to "reinvigorate" the Transatlantic Economic Council, an organization meant to increase international trade.
As secretary of state, Clinton did indeed go on to tout her work "revitalizing" the economic partnership in a speech before the Brookings Institute, using nearly the same language Blumenthal advised.
Blumenthal sent Clinton and Cheryl Mills, her chief of staff, notes on a draft of a speech for the Council on Foreign Relations in July with instructions not to circulate his memo beyond the two of themselves.
"This speech can't afford to be lackluster. It will then be held up in invidious comparison to Obama's glittering best efforts," he said. "Your speech must have, amid the policies, a distinctive and authoritative voice."
The assistance appeared to go both ways, however.
In December, Blumenthal entreated Clinton to help a man whose name was redacted with securing a position at the State Department, a process that had apparently been stalled.
"In the new year, can this get untangled?" Blumenthal asked.
Within five minutes, Clinton had passed the message along to Sullivan and Mills.
Clinton has defended her reliance on Blumenthal to provide informal intelligence memos about Libya both before and after the 2012 Benghazi terror attack by claiming she was simply accepting "unsolicited" advice from an "old friend."
But the roughly 1,900 emails released by the State Department Tuesday cast doubt on the presidential candidate's characterization of Blumenthal, raising further questions about why he was collecting a paycheck from the Clinton Foundation while secretly serving as a top State Department aide.
