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September 11, 2012. A Day in the Life of Hillary Clinton’s Career Ambitions

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Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had two chief rivals in the corridors of power–Vice President Joseph Biden and then-Ambassador to the U.N. Susan E. Rice. Each outweighed her in credibility, dependability, and sincerity. Biden posed by far the biggest threat as potential presidential candidate. Rice was being mentioned as next Secretary of State.

Two of the first emails Mrs. Clinton issued before dawn on September 11, 2012, reflected the influence of Biden and Rice.

At 4:39 a.m., Clinton sent her first email, asking to see Stella O’Leary, founder of Irish American Democrats, who had written through channels praising the Clintons’ work with Ireland. O’Leary referenced a meeting with Clinton that week scheduled for Martin McGuinness, Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland. Back on St. Patrick’s Day, 2012, McGuinness had met with President Obama and Vice President Biden. In the ongoing effort to maintain ties with Irish Americans, Clinton needed to catch up. Events later that day–the tragic attacks in Benghazi, Libya–altered the timetable. Clinton met with McGuinness in October.

Pre-dawn on September 11, by 5:15 a.m. Clinton had forwarded eight articles, previously emailed to her. They went to “Russorv@state.gov” (Robert V. Russo), with the request, “Pls print.” (First was a blog post by Paul Krugman at the New York Times, forwarded by Clinton at 4:44 a.m.)

At 4:57 a.m., Clinton forwarded a Foreign Policy article titled “The Point Guard,” by James Traub.

The ‘point guard’ was Susan Rice. The article’s sub-heading read, “Susan Rice calls the plays for Barack Obama at the United Nations. Could she lead his foreign-policy team next? Should she?”

In hindsight, the Traub article seems to have had impact. The piece focused largely on Libya–and on Susan Rice. While administration policy and Rice get mixed marks, the piece nevertheless devotes mega-watt attention to Rice (see at link). Her impressive educational credentials, powerful life story, and phenomenal work ethic are forcefully highlighted.

Of particular interest:

In the entertaining parlor game of “Who would be secretary of state in a hypothetical Obama second term?” Rice is now considered the leader, or perhaps tied with Donilon, though questions about his possible role in the recent disclosure of sensitive national security information to the New York Times could threaten his confirmability. (Handicappers now place both in front of Sen. John Kerry.) It’s unclear that she’d be good at a job like that, though; her smile may be just a trifle too forced, her patience a bit too thin. A State Department official who has known her since the Clinton days says that though Rice is hard-driving, diligent, and effective, “There is a disconnect between that and wisdom.” The president, a shrewd judge of character, may know this about her, but the fact that he trusts her may matter more. Susan Rice is not to be denied. She has never faltered along the steep upward trajectory of her career. Some high-powered women have dropped out of the administration to tend to their families, and Rice says she is sympathetic to their plight; she just doesn’t share it. At one point I asked Rice whether she had ever experienced a serious failure. She thought about it. No, she hadn’t. “Some have tried to take me on,” she murmured. Presumably, they lived to regret it.

Traub also gave Rice forceful credit for her loyalty, her passion, her pragmatism, and her blunt honesty. He also noted that, after working in President Clinton’s administration, Rice chose to support Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton. One hesitates to be a mind reader, but it is hard to imagine Secretary of State Clinton shrugging that off. For one thing, four articles Clinton next forwarded to Russo for printing were relatively laudatory as they pertained to her.* For another, Clinton requested that the Traub piece, like the others, be printed.

“Pls print.”

“Pls print” —

Side note: While Clinton as we know set up a private email server at home, she seems not to have set up a printer. Or if she did, she did not use it much. Was her “Pls print” request just a way to save paper and ink cartridges on the home front? Were the State printers that much better than the State email servers?

Or can one assume that when Secretary of State Clinton asked a State employee to use Department resources to print an item, she considered that document to be State Department business?

For perspective, the searchable SecState Clinton emails are posted online here–30,322 emails. Clinton’s frequent “Pls print” request turns up more than 3,400 times. Assuming that many of the results are duplicates or email chains, that’s still hundreds of pages of printing requests submitted to State. (Once again, as when they exited the White House and then had to return White House furniture to the public, the Clintons look like a couple of cheese-parers. But that’s another story.)

For all searchable State Department emails released and not just Clinton emails, go here. In this archive, 13,850 emails contain the private email address “hrod17@clintonemail.com.” Of these in turn, Clinton sent more than 8,200. (Emails received by Clinton begin only about page 413 out of 693–at 20 emails per page.) Again, many are duplicates and/or parts of email chains. But again, the total is hundreds of emails. Probably few people have read all of them. A quick check reveals that many emails sent by Secretary of State Clinton have parts redacted. In other words, either they contain private email addresses or other personal information about non-government employees, or they contain material now deemed classified. As written earlier, one consequence of Clinton’s private email server was to comingle State and off-duty communications.

Back to the early morning hours of September 11, 2012 —

At 5:14 a.m., Clinton replied to Melanne Verveer, who had fulsomely praised an appearance by Bill Clinton. From Verveer (September 6):

H I’m in the business lounge at Dubai airport en route to Dhaka watching your husband’s extraordinary speech and surrounded by countless foreigners all cheering him on. Only he would elicit that kind of reaction at home and abroad! I think it was his most brilliant performance yet, all bias aside. [NAME REDACTED] emailed me in the middle of it to say that you have to run for president so she can work for you!!!

Clinton’s reply:

That must have been a surreal moment–so far from home but so present. He did a great job for the President, the party and the country. Come see me when you have time this week.

At 5:22 a.m., Clinton emailed Cheryl Mills, simultaneously at both her home and work addresses. Subject line: “Need to be sure we talk today.” Message: “What time works for you?” At 5:35 a.m. she emailed Mills again, with the same subject heading and asking “How about 4:30?” At 5:41 a.m., she again emailed Mills with the “need to be sure we talk” and an additional request, “Also, can I call you around 7:30 this morning?” (Mills replied early that she was coming in.)

Clinton’s emails to Mills look increasingly urgent if not agitated. They had nothing to do with Benghazi, where the attacks had not erupted. However, the article on Susan Rice does seem to have inspired an action regarding Libya. Clinton’s next email went to Huma Abedin at 5:50 a.m.:

Request:

Can you get us a copy of Bernard Henri-Levi’s film about Libya? I think Harvey made it and showed it at Cannes last spring.

This would presumably be the documentary about the Libyan war by Bernard Henri-Levy. Other writers have addressed this item.

Clinton then turned to more respectable daily State business, at 5:15 forwarding a CNN article to Russo titled “Chinese media make inroads into Africa,” with “Pls print.” A minute later, she replied to the sender, “I don’t know why we can’t get the Congress (or anyone else in Washington) to care about this.”

Incidentally, the tone and diction of this comment are very unlike Clinton–unusually feeling and colorful, in contrast to the banality of most of her State emails. Either she got hold of a genuine issue for American concerns, or she suspected that Chinese media in Africa would not likely feature her, or both.

At 7:30 a.m., Clinton emailed four people in State with the subject heading “Xi Xinping‘s letter to me.” Message: “I’d like to respond as quickly as possible. Pls get me a draft today. Thx.”

At 8:38 a.m., she sent a message headed “Schedule”:

Pls reach out to schedule the following: Terre Blair–mtg in NY or DC Maggie Williams–she prefers dinner in NY John Kerry–he asked to see me when I saw him last night. Maybe mtg after work– for drinks or dinner? Not sure what’s best.

A few other emails on State matters were followed by a friendly reply to Capricia Marshall at 6:57 p.m.–“Are you still here in office?” Marshall had emailed Clinton at 5:45 that “Jake was simply amazing”– “He was our featured speaker at our State of the Administration on Monday. He really wowed the Ambassadors as he has such a command of your accomplishments. Have a few thoughts on this.”

By coincidence, Susan E. Rice had received word of the Benghazi attacks a few minutes earlier, in a message not yet transmitted to SecState:

From: Pelofsky, Eric 3 Sent: Tuesday, September 11, 2012 6:42 PM To: Rice, Susan E (USUN); Singh, Priya (USUN); Ryu, Rexon Y; Oat-Judge, Siobhan Cc: DiCarlo, Rosemary A (USUN) Subject: RE: URGENT – Benghazi I should have mentioned that NEA conveyed to me that all of this is closehold. SBU

From: Pelofsky, Eric 3 Sent: Tuesday, September 11, 2012 6:41 PM To: Rice, Susan E (USUN); Singh, Priya (USUN); Ryu, Rexon Y; Oat-Judge, Siobhan Cc: DiCarlo, Rosemary A (USUN) Subject: URGENT – Benghazi As reported, the Benghazi compound came under attack and it took a bit of time for the “Annex” colleagues and Libyan February 17 Brigade to secure it. One of our colleagues was killed — IMO.Sean Smith. Amb. Chris Stevens, who was visiting Benghazi this week, is missing. U.S. and Libyan colleagues . . .

For future reference, emails released show Clinton sending only 29 emails, including a few duplicates, on September 11, 2012. Relatively few emails fore-grounded State concerns over Clinton’s own. Fewer still had anything to do with Benghazi. Word of the attacks came only late in the day.

Only at 8:51 p.m. did Clinton’s emails about Benghazi begin, with the heading “I’m in my office,” sent to Diane Reynolds (i.e. Chelsea Clinton):

Because of attacks on our embassy in Cairo and our office in Benghazi so email when you can talk.

At the time, with incomplete information, she may have guessed that Cairo was the worse problem. At 11:12 p.m., Clinton emailed her daughter again with the heading “I’m in my office”:

Two of our officers were killed in Benghazi by an Al Queda-like group: The Ambassador, whom I handpicked and a young communications officer on temporary duty w a wife and two young children. Very hard day and I fear more of the same tomorrow. Let’s try again later.

U.S. Consulate, Benghazi

“Chris Smith” —

After word of the Benghazi attacks, Clinton sent two emails headed “Chris Smith.” Notwithstanding her poignant “I handpicked” Ambassador Christopher Stevens, she seems to have conflated his name with that of Foreign Service officer Sean Smith, who like Stevens was killed in the first attack. CIA contractors Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty were killed in the second attack.

The first went out at 11:38 p.m. It contained a rather weighty question, asking input:

11:38 p.m. “Chris Smith.” “From: H <hrod17@clintonemail.com>Sent: Tuesday, September 11, 2012 11:38 PM To: ‘sullivanjj@state.gov’; ‘millscd@state.gov’; ‘nulandvj@state.gov’ Subject: Chris Smith

Cheryl told me the Libyans confirmed his death. Should we announce tonight or wait until morning?

The second went at 11:40 p.m., with the brief message–“Ok.”–in response to Mills’ reply: “We are awaiting formal confirmation from our team. We are drafting a statement while we wait.”

At some point, exact time and author not given, a “Statement on the attack in Benghazi” was issued. The initial email is archived with several others issued over the next few days–with progressively more personal statements over Clinton’s name, about the four Americans killed, some repeating the personal asseveration that she had handpicked Ambassador Stevens.

The take-away here is hard and painful. First, for a sitting cabinet member to send emails by private email server at home was almost pathologically stupid. Despite GOP bloviating, there are genuine security issues involved. Add in the optics of cost-saving by sending your emails to be printed at government expense, and the set-up doesn’t get any smarter or sunnier. Add in the banal light in which they present the Secretary of State herself.

Second, while a Secretary of State might not be determined responsible for security concerns, it should be a given that s/he show concern as a matter of character. Mrs. Clinton’s emails are devoid of that concern. They show–and again, these are the emails written by Clinton herself–a public figure self-engrossed, self-advancing, and relentlessly concerned about image. Some State Department personnel seem to have concerted with her. At 9:46 p.m, after the attacks had commenced, then U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul sent this email, subject line “Help”:

Clintn with Putin was on front page of Kommersant yesterday. Jake Sullivan, head of policy planning, wants to get a copy. Could you help me find it electronically ? Thanks mike

(McFaul resigned as ambassador in 2014.)

Paradoxically, the rigid concern with image leads to a gargantuan tin ear. Setting aside if one could the deeper issue of character, this is the issue for Mrs. Clinton as a campaigner. The problem with her hoarse yelling is not that she is a woman, but that she comes across as inauthentic. People can yell in passion, but when Hillary Clinton yells, it’s not from passion. She is trying to sound like a genuine dyed-in-the-wool pol on the hustings. Channeling Bill Clinton. Channeling Bernie Sanders. But it’s not who she is. So she always comes across as trying to seem — something. This is not a feminist issue. True it is that any woman in public life will be on the receiving end of misogynistic attacks. Equally true is that the Clintons are not the messengers for that message.

*5:01 a.m. forward “The Comeback Vegan,” by Maureen Dowd; 5:06 a.m. forward “A Touchy Relationship,” a NYTimes editorial; 5:10 a.m. forward “Faithfully Democratic,” a Washington Post blog post; and 5:15 a.m. forward “The Two Clinton Legacies that Obama Should Continue,” from The Hill.

 

Hillary Clinton’s Emails

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Actually, the title of this post is a misnomer. They are the public’s emails. But as with the contents of the U.S. Mint, public ownership and public access are two different things.

What we do going forward is what matters most. Facing these State Department emails, let’s start with some constructive recommendations. Here would be my recommendations for policy and best practices, if I could vote on them.

From this time forth,

  1. Work emails for a government agency should be done using government-issued equipment. “GI” wasn’t a bad name for the guys who bore it.
  2. If government personnel choose to send emails or other communications they deem private or personal, on government equipment, it should be with the understanding that the messages are subject to authorized scrutiny. (Many university campuses have pretty much this arrangement, with considerably less of a rationale than the State Department would have.)
  3. When someone’s government service ends, emails and other correspondence should be reviewed by an independent entity (three or more objective people, with enough sense and character to divide up the job equitably). The independent entity would determine which communications are work-related and which, if any, are not.
  4. The non-work-related communications would not be deleted. They would be quarantined for 50 years. The work-related correspondence would be archived according to policy.
  5. To keep the difficulty and expense for others to a minimum, government workers should be advised to keep their personal communications while at work to a minimum. Restrict personal communications to their personal email accounts, and restrict personal emailing or telephoning to their off time (lunch, breaks, after hours).

Emailing is still a relatively new form of communication (if older than IM, texting, or tweeting). Policy to cover communication in government still needs refinement. State and local governments, businesses at all levels, academia, the judicial system and the world of medicine have the same issues.

Not that there aren’t worse problems. 

That said, Secretary Clinton’s arrangement is unique. As described yesterday in the Washington Post,

The server that Clinton used as secretary of state was stored at her home in Chappaqua, N.Y., and was shared with her husband, former president Bill Clinton, and his staff. The device was managed during that time by a State Department staffer who was paid personally by the Clintons for his work on their private system.

Setting aside lurid suggestions floated by the GOP, the most rational conjecture as to why Secretary Clinton would set up a private email server is that she wanted to hang on to the material to recycle later, in more books about her career. This is the simplest theory that fits the known facts, including the Clintons’ conduct when leaving the White House in January 2001.

Continuing the saga as outlined most recently in the Post, the server with the emails was taken over by Platte River Networks in 2013; the emails were removed from a second server in 2014; and Clinton’s attorneys then separated the emails they designated as work-related from those they designated as entirely personal. The good news in the most recent Post report is that the deleted emails may be recovered. I hope so; and if there is any question about which emails should released for public reading, that’s what judges are for. My understanding of Clinton’s previous statements is that she and her attorneys intended to turn over all work-related emails.

Clear enough, as far as it goes. However, media discussions of the emails are usually confusing, because the concepts of “public” and “private” are confused. Secretary Clinton’s work as secretary of state belongs to the public. This statement does not mean that all details can be released to the general public. In the public interest, some operations of a public office need to be kept confidential. In the public interest, personnel matters are kept private; government employees like other people have a right to privacy. In the public interest, the safety and security of people who work for us, like the Secretary of State, are protected. Again in the public interest, the safety and security of dignitaries, government officials, and private citizens of other countries are protected.

That matter of safety and security–unfortunately–is one of the places where Hillary Clinton’s private email server fell down.

Some clarification is necessary here.

I have ignored Republican hype about Benghazi from start to finish, partly because I am wrapping up a book on another subject; partly because the investigation so far looks bogus.

(‘Benghazi’ hearings /One /GOP tack to /Undermine /Sense.)

The party that campaigns on “shrinking government” has little room to talk about security. Shrinking “government” means shrinking security. It means shrinking information. It means shrinking advance notice and advance warning and advance planning. It means shrinking tactics, let alone strategy. It means shrinking transparency, oversight, and accountability. It means shrinking the talent pool, in diplomacy, security, and the military as well as in everything else. In practice, it means outsourcing, off-shoring, and subcontracting–all of which are security breaches waiting to happen.

I might add that a party willing to violate the Logan Act, eager to invade other countries, and always ready to downgrade diplomacy and diplomats is not positioned to point fingers over the deaths of heroic foreign service officers and ambassadors. You cannot trust a faction that writes a separate open letter to the state of Iran. And the contestants in the Republican race for the White House have expressed little awareness of what the U.S. Foreign Service, and U.S. diplomats, face. When they bring up dangers abroad at all, it is generally to voice a scurrility about President Obama, who inherited all the disasters left by the previous administration, has done more to contend with such than any other administration in U.S. history–and has had to surmount opposition to even the most common-sense diplomacy, from the very people who created the disasters.

We could also add the party’s over-all allegiance to thuggery, violence, tough talk, and the weapons industry to the list, while we’re at it. The GOP as the party of “security”? Small wonder it scrambles to deflect attention from its own problems, to a lightning rod like either of the Clintons.

So it was a matter of surprise and no little chagrin to learn that the Secretary of State had set up a private email server to handle her State Department work. In other words, she conducted government work on equipment that she purchased and controlled privately. Whether the equipment was “private” in the security sense remains to be seen. Clinton did keep it private in the ownership sense (private property); she did not donate it to the State Department. I am not going to jump to conclusions, especially about security matters, and I have never been a fan of hysteria, especially in politics or the news media. But the emails released so far do reveal a few facts.

Setting aside both the wild accusations and conjecture from the right wing, and the inaccurate or smarmy defenses from Clinton and her allies, some valid statements can be made.

  1. Many of the Clinton emails contained sensitive information. No matter how delusional Republicans in Congress get, the actuality remains that of 4,368 emails released in August, hundreds indicate sensitive details from the daily operations of State and/or negotiations with foreign individuals or entities, in 2009 and 2010. Leaving diplomacy itself out of the picture, if you genuinely care about the safety of the people involved in it, you might care that more than 1,500 emails mention or discuss a “call” or “meeting” or “schedule,” often signaled in the subject line, with the whens and wheres. Thus if some ill-disposed person (besides Sen. Cotton) wanted when-and-where on Secretary of State Clinton or on people she was dealing with, hundreds of emails contained the information. Searching for the predictable word “call” generates 1,409 emails. Many contain “call” in the subject line. Searching for “meeting” generates 836 results, many with “meeting” in the subject line. Some were sent by Clinton, although understandably she received far more than she sent. Often, dates and/or times of the call or meeting are included, and often in the subject heading–along with the names of the people involved. The 2009-2010 emails contain few references to Libya, and none to J. Christopher Stevens, Sean Smith, or Benghazi; emails from 2012-2013 will presumably contain more.

While waiting to see those relevant emails, we basically have to hope that no antagonists hacked them or read them, or did so effectively. Clinton’s emails often detailed the when and where of her schedule, with times, dates, places, and names. About 60 emails are a “Mini schedule” for Clinton (heading in subject line). “Mini schedule” emails appear throughout 2009 and 2010. So do emails featuring the word “schedule” in general, with 377 results, sent and mainly received by Clinton, again with “schedule” often indicated in the subject line. The phrase “conference call” generates 31 results, nine from Clinton and the rest received by her; several of these also signal “call” or “schedule” in the subject line.

One oddity is that this set-up was created by someone who, according to the Post, has imposed a series of barriers for reporters trying to get through with questions for her 2016 campaign, and who has complained for years about her lack of privacy, about constant media scrutiny, etc. As Secretary of State, Clinton seems to have assumed that her position protected her privacy, including communication channels she set up outside State.

  1. Hundreds of Clinton’s emails show consciousness of security. References to the “secure” turn up 645 times in the August batch of emails, sometimes in the subject lines. “Secure” includes a “secure line” (15 results), or “talk secure” (13 results, two sent by Clinton), or a “secure phone” (5 results) or a “secure call” (16 results, 2 from Clinton). An email of March 3, 2010, refers to Clinton’s “yellow phone.”

The acronym OPS turns up 148 times. This abbreviation seems to refer to the Watch Officer, State Department Operations Center S-ES/O, 202-xxx-xxxx, Andrew Kim Johnson for one. About 25 of these emails were sent by Clinton, although others are replies with messages sent by Clinton in the email chains. Clinton herself often referred to OPS.

This point brings up a third one.

  1. The email chains show combinations of personal and government, government and political, and personal and political. Partly such combinations would occur in any office or organization. Whose work emails would be devoid of all reference to birthdays, births, or congratulations? But this server and this government correspondence–as we now know–were not in a workplace. It’s funny in a way that Clinton operated a small State Department communications center in her own and her spouse’s private residence. Clinton donors strike me generally as exactly the people who would tend to ridicule a political candidate, for example, whose campaign headquarters were his home.

In any case, some of the email-chain combinations look less benign. There is no denying that Clinton used the OPS secure line for private matters and/or for political matters, not just for high state matters. She refers to doing so. An easy example, not lurid, comes from February 2010.

On February 9, Clinton emailed several colleagues and friends (7:39 a.m.) that New York Times columnist David Brooks “Took a shot at me in his column today,” and asked, “Any idea what prompted it?”

The recommendation in reply was to bring in Brooks, and perhaps other rightwing columnists, “for an OTR with you.”

Clinton agreed but suggested that something more was needed: “Agreed–full speed ahead. But, I think we may also need a more aggressive strategy of pushing our message. Can you call me at home thru OPS? Thx.”

A career State Department employee also replied, but keeping the separate tracks separate, “Philippe and I had an offline conversation about this and I agree entirely” that the Secretary should talk with Brooks and others.

One could argue that mingling social and other emails in the same chains might assist security: the mixed email chains and the mixed subject lines might camouflage, or at least not flag, high state matters. Or so I thought, before I noticed all the emails headed with indicators about what the Secretary would be doing that day, with whom, and when.

 

More later.