Modal Trigger
2011 emails sent from Sidney Blumenthal to Hillary Clinton have been released under a subpoena.Photo: AP (2)
WASHINGTON — Viagra, “shock and awe” and making fun of the French — they’re all in the e-mails confidant Sidney Blumenthal sent to Hillary Rodham Clinton as Moammar Khadafy’s regime was collapsing in Libya in 2011.
The GOP-led House Benghazi Committee released a fresh batch of the messages this week after Blumenthal turned them over under subpoena.
The documents revealed an astonishing volume of information that he jammed into Clinton’s personal in-box, ranging from notes on weapons caches to unconfirmed gossip.
In a March 27, 2011, e-mail, Blumenthal relayed a “rumor” that the besieged Libyan dictator “has adopted a rape policy and has even distributed Viagra to troops.”
Seven days later, Blumenthal shared a Daily Beast article about how then-French President Nicolas Sarkozy and the “incestuous world of French intellectuals” plotted to take down Khadafy, which included details on Sarkozy’s love life.
“Hilarious story about Sarkozy (including his tryst with Carla Bruni) . . . Only Moliere could do this justice,” Blumenthal notified Clinton.
In another e-mail, Blumenthal suggested using a “verboten” strategy to take out Khadafy that gave credit to George W. Bush.
“Here’s a possibly counter-intuitive notion and option: That aspects of the Bush war plan for the invasion of Iraq, now verboten for planning or even thinking, might be applicable, in particular shock-and-awe,” Blumenthal wrote March 26, 2011.
Blumenthal testified for nine hours last week before the House committee in a deposition he and Democratic allies insist was a political charade to learn more about Clinton rather than to glean information on the 2012 deadly attack on the US compound in Benghazi.
Blumenthal, who was employed by the Clinton Foundation in 2011 and had no official role in Libya, told the committee he acted as a conduit in passing along the intel from a former CIA official — now identified as Tyler Drumheller — so Clinton could use it “as she saw fit.”
But Clinton’s longtime pal was passing along unconfirmed information.
The Viagra rumor was “widely alleged at the time,” said Professor Juan Cole, a Mideast expert at the University of Michigan. “Libyans claimed they found the blue pills on slain mercenaries.”
But Amnesty International found no evidence Khadafy ordered rapes.
As the dictator was being toppled, Blumenthal urged Clinton to seize the credit.
“You must go on camera. You must establish yourself in the historical record at this moment,” Blumenthal wrote Aug. 22, 2011.
Little more than a year later, the US compound in Benghazi was attacked and four Americans, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens, were killed.
No comments:
Post a Comment