The 15 Benghazi Emails You Need to Read

The State Department released close to 900 pages of emails from Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary on Friday, providing a detailed looked at how an embattled agency responded to terrorist attacks in Benghazi and how Clinton, the frontrunner for the 2016 Democratic nomination for president, deals with her inner circle of advisers and well-wishers.

POLITICO read the documents to find the most insightful and telling emails. There are deadly serious moments — Clinton learning of the death of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, for instance — and light-hearted ones, as when she jokes about her concussion. And there are political moments, with glimpses of top officials’ concerns about how the attack on the Libyan compound would affect the 2012 elections. While there doesn’t seem to be the kind of “smoking gun” that many Republicans imagined, the exchanges provide plenty of one-liners that will surely be used against Clinton when she testifies before a House panel later this year.

Here are the emails you should read:

‘The public face of Libya’

Clinton’s critics are sure to seize on this email. Jake Sullivan, a former Clinton deputy chief of staff, wrote Clinton outlining what appears to be talking points on her leadership in Libya. In that memo he declares that Clinton has been “the public face of the U.S. effort in Libya.” Sullivan, it seems, was referring to the American-led efforts to topple former Libyan strongman Muammar Qaddafi. “She was instrumental in securing the authorization, building the coalition and tightening the noose around Qadhafi and his regime.”

The document that was eventually classified

Clinton has insisted she didn’t share classified information through her email account, but the State Department concluded that one email exchange on potential arrests after the attacks was indeed classified. The document appears to have been formally classified Friday by the State Department.

Her “cracked head”

In December 2012, Clinton was scheduled to testify before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Benghazi, but her appearance was scuttled after she fainted and suffered from a concussion. In a Dec. 20 email, Clinton joked that she was still “nursing my cracked head” in an email to two aides, William Burns and Thomas Nides. Burns responded that he felt “very luck to serve in your State Department” — one of many notes of flattery contained in the documents.

Flubbed name

On Sept. 11, a State Department employee named Sean Smith was killed in the attacks, along with Ambassador Chris Stevens. Smith’s death was confirmed by the Libyans, Clinton wrote in an email to top advisers, where she mistakenly called him “Chris Smith.”

Via: Politico

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