By Brendan Bordelon
Tuesday, August 25, 2015
How could Hillary Clinton’s staff let her get away with
it?
It’s one of the most perplexing questions surrounding the
massive scandal over Clinton’s use of an unsecured, private e-mail server when
she served as secretary of state. How could it be that no one in the State
Department pointed out that Clinton was violating government policy and putting
sensitive information at risk? Why didn’t her closest advisers warn that the
move could torpedo her resurgent presidential ambitions?
State Department staffers aren’t talking — not yet, at
least. But the thousands of Clinton e-mails reluctantly released by the State
Department in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit are
illuminating. They reveal a Secretary of State heavily insulated from her
agency’s rank-and-file by a devoted inner circle, one which relentlessly
lavished praise on Clinton and sometimes functioned more like receptionists
than top strategic advisers. Many of the same confidantes appear set to take
high-level jobs in a future Clinton White House, meaning her “yes-man problem”
is likely to persist should she become president.
The vast majority of the 3,500 e-mails released so far
were sent or received by just four members of Clinton’s inner circle at State:
Cheryl Mills, Bill Clinton’s lawyer during his impeachment trial, who became
Secretary Clinton’s chief of staff; Huma Abedin, Clinton’s longtime aide, who
became her deputy chief of staff; Jake Sullivan, a foreign-policy adviser to
Clinton’s 2008 presidential run, who became her top foreign-policy adviser at
State; and Philippe Reines, Clinton’s long-serving Senate spokesperson, who
became a senior advisor.
From day one, there was a sharp divide between the
department’s career officials and this personal coterie of loyalists who
followed Clinton into office. Reines lays out that divide explicitly on May 1,
2009, in an e-mail to Mills disputing a New York Times quote from a source “in
[Clinton’s] circle” who described tension between Clinton and retired General
James Jones, Obama’s national security adviser. “Someone in her circle is
someone like you, or a Jake, or me,” Reines wrote. “And none of us would ever
say anything like that. Someone who was slated for a position at State
irrespective of the choice of HRC as Secretary should not be allowed to be identified
that way.”
E-mail after e-mail shows how top State Department
officials were kept from dealing with Clinton directly, instead being rerouted
to the members of her inner circle. Though nominally in charge of the
Department’s public-affairs division, assistant secretary P. J. Crowley was
included in just 94 of the 3,500 e-mails, and even on those he was often merely
CCed. In all but a handful of cases, Crowley’s messages to Clinton were first
sent through Mills, who then decided whether to forward them along to her boss
with a simple “FYI.” In the exchange involving General Jones — clearly a high
public-affairs priority for Clinton and the State Department — Crowley was
excluded altogether.
E-mails between Clinton and her personal advisers,
meanwhile, were brimming with fawning praise for the secretary. Dozens of
times, Mills forwarded messages from State Department observers and lower-level
staffers congratulating Clinton on a successful speech or media appearance. “A little
positive reinforcement to pass on to the S,” read the subject line of one March
28, 2009 e-mail, in which a University of Southern California lecturer called
her trip to Mexico a “stunning success” and “jaw-dropping.” Mills also
forwarded an April 30, 2009 message from Paul Begala, a former Clinton adviser.
“I gave Sec. Clinton an A+ in our dopey CNN report card last night,” he wrote.
“So did Donna Brazile. The only two A+’s all night.” Clinton would sometimes
ask her staff to print the more effusive commendations.
Many other e-mails contain news reports or editorials
complimentary of Clinton’s tenure. “Andrew Sullivan with the Hillary love,”
read one e-mail from September 16, 2012, which included a positive op-ed from
the Boston Herald. “Higher ground is where all great solutions and triumphs are
found and scaled,” wrote Roy Pence, a Clinton-family friend included on the
e-mail chain. “HRC, once again, is taking people there.” A perusal of the
documents revealed no e-mails highlighting negative media coverage of the
secretary.
Some of the e-mails show an apparent desire to bolster
Clinton’s confidence in the shadow of President Obama. In one especially
effusive e-mail, Reines praised Clinton’s July 26, 2009 appearance on Meet the
Press. “You threw a perfect game — or at least a no hitter,” he wrote, saying
her performance proved “you’re in a class all your own (including the President
who became enmeshed in the Gates incident.)” While not officially a State
Department employee, Clinton shadow adviser Sidney Blumenthal attacked
President Obama while simultaneously congratulating Clinton. “I don’t know
about details of Obama’s plan, but you looked terrific at the speech,” he wrote
on September 11, 2009. In an August 22, 2011 missive lauding Clinton for presiding
over the fall of Libyan dictator Moammar Qaddafi, Blumenthal struck out at the
“flamingly stupid ‘leading from behind’ phrase,” which the Obama White House
was using to describe the intervention.
At times, Clinton’s inner circle seemed aware of the
lengths they’d go to buck up their boss. “Your arrival in Kabul landed the
front page picture in the NYT and sparked an on-line poll in Huff Post about
your coat. At last check, its favorability rating is 77 percent,” wrote Crowley
in a rare direct message to Clinton on November 19, 2009. Reines, CCed on the
message, quickly wrote back. “Now I know why Huma has been at a computer all
day clicking the mouse incessantly,” he quipped.
When Clinton’s top advisers weren’t busy applauding the
Secretary, she often engaged them in menial work. Abedin received the brunt of
it, with the deputy chief of staff being instructed to “pls print” dozens of
budget testimonies, intelligence memoranda, Afghanistan updates, and a whole
host of other documents. But Mills, Clinton’s chief of staff, also seemed
caught up in minutiae, forwarding hundreds of e-mails to Clinton in a matter of
months and apparently operating as the Secretary’s personal e-mail screening
service. Even Sullivan, now a shoe-in for the prestigious position of national
security adviser should Clinton win the presidency, wasn’t immune. Clinton
would often e-mail him an interesting news article with the same accompanying
instructions, “pls print.” And in April 2009, Sullivan was asked to compile a
list of the key White House attendees at AIPAC conferences throughout the
years.
Isolated from the broader department and surrounded by
seemingly adoring advisers who were often buried in busy work, it’s perhaps
unsurprising that Clinton never thought through the consequences of her private
server use. But if history is any indication, a staff shake-up is probably not
in the offing. Mills, Abedin, Reines, and Sullivan have served the Clintons for
years — some of them through scandals as bad, if not worse, than the
private-server fiasco. If Clinton wins in 2016, the only place they’re likely
to be going is the White House.
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