While advising Mrs. Clinton on Libya, Mr. Sydney Blumenthal, who had been barred from a State Department job by aides to President Obama, was employed by her family\u2019s philanthropy, the Clinton Foundation, to help with research, \u201cmessage guidance\u201d and the planning of commemorative events, according to foundation officials. <\/p>\n
During the same period, he also worked on and off as a paid consultant to Media Matters and American Bridge, organizations that helped lay the groundwork for Mrs. Clinton\u2019s 2016 campaign.<\/p>\n
Much of the Libya “intelligence” that Mr. Blumenthal passed on to Mrs. Clinton appears to have come from a group of business associates he was advising as they sought to win contracts from the Libyan transitional government. <\/p>\n
The venture, which was ultimately unsuccessful, involved other Clinton friends, a private military contractor and one former C.I.A. spy seeking to get in on the “ground floor” of the new Libyan economy.<\/p>\n
The projects \u2014 creating floating hospitals to treat Libya\u2019s war wounded and temporary housing for displaced people, and building schools \u2014 would have required State Department permits, but foundered before the business partners could seek official approval.<\/p>\n
It is not clear whether Mrs. Clinton or the State Department knew of Mr. Blumenthal\u2019s interest in pursuing business in Libya; a State Department spokesman declined to say. Many aspects of Mr. Blumenthal\u2019s involvement in the planned Libyan venture remain unclear. He declined repeated requests to discuss it.<\/p>\n
But interviews with his associates and a review of previously unreported correspondence suggest that \u2014 once again \u2014 it may be difficult to determine where one of Mr. Blumenthal\u2019s jobs ended and another began.<\/p>\n
A series of memos from Mr. Blumenthal \u2014 who was not an employee of the State Department \u2014 to Mrs. Clinton about events unfolding in Libya before and after the death of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, have been obtained by The New York Times.<\/p>\n
Mrs. Clinton, who was secretary of state at the time, took Mr. Blumenthal\u2019s advice seriously, forwarding his memos to senior diplomatic officials in Libya and Washington and at times asking them to respond. Mrs. Clinton continued to pass around his memos even after other senior diplomats concluded that Mr. Blumenthal\u2019s assessments were often unreliable.<\/p>\n
Source: NYT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
While advising Mrs. Clinton on Libya, Mr. Sydney Blumenthal, who had been barred from a State Department job by aides to President Obama, was employed by her family\u2019s philanthropy, the Clinton Foundation, to help with research, \u201cmessage guidance\u201d and the planning of commemorative events, according to foundation officials. During the same period, he also worked … Continue reading “Destroying Libya for profit”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2961,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,10],"tags":[1235,674,1115,6054,11743],"class_list":["post-19014","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-united-states","tag-cia","tag-hillary-clinton","tag-libya","tag-state-department","tag-sydney-blumenthal"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19014","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2961"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19014"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19014\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19015,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19014\/revisions\/19015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}