{"id":25650,"date":"2015-05-23T16:46:01","date_gmt":"2015-05-23T20:46:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=25650"},"modified":"2015-05-23T16:46:01","modified_gmt":"2015-05-23T20:46:01","slug":"a-private-state-department","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=25650","title":{"rendered":"A Private State Department?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/secret-agent-sidney-1432333139\" target=\"_blank\">The Wall Street Journal<\/a> posted an article today about the latest batch of Hillary Clinton&#8217;s emails released by the <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"United States Department of State\" href=\"http:\/\/maps.google.com\/maps?ll=38.8941666667,-77.0483333333&amp;spn=0.01,0.01&amp;q=38.8941666667,-77.0483333333 (United%20States%20Department%20of%20State)&amp;t=h\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"geolocation\">State Department<\/a>. While there is no &#8216;smoking gun&#8217; in the emails as such, the emails reveal a State Department that was not run according to the usual chain of command.<\/p>\n<p>The article reports:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>In the pre-<a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Memorial Day\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Memorial_Day\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"wikipedia\">Memorial Day weekend<\/a> news dump, long-time Clinton plumber <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Sidney Blumenthal\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Sidney_Blumenthal\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"wikipedia\">Sidney Blumenthal<\/a> plays <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Get Smart\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Get_Smart\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"wikipedia\">Maxwell Smart<\/a>, passing along intel on Benghazi from half a world away. Secret Agent Blumenthal apparently derived this wisdom from his new business associates who were attempting to win contracts from Libyan nationals. Mrs. Clinton often circulates the memos among her top diplomats with comments like \u201cuseful insight\u201d and \u201cvery interesting,\u201d and they would often then push them down the chain of command, without identifying the source.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>Mrs. Clinton was the Secretary of State, for heaven\u2019s sake, one of the five most powerful national security positions in the U.S. government. She had the entire State Department intelligence division at her disposal, known as the <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Bureau of Intelligence and Research\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Bureau_of_Intelligence_and_Research\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"wikipedia\">Bureau of Intelligence and Research<\/a> or INR, and presumably had access to the 16 other U.S. agencies that make up the intelligence community.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>Yet she\u2019s consuming and taking seriously information from an \u201canalyst\u201d who knows nothing about the subject. Mr. Blumenthal\u2019s expertise is in political wet work and monetizing his connections to the Clintons. The imprimatur that Mrs. Clinton\u2019s office put on Mr. Blumenthal\u2019s outside improv offered him a way to influence policy even after the <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Presidency of Barack Obama\" href=\"http:\/\/www.whitehouse.gov\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"homepage\">Obama White House<\/a> had barred Mrs. Clinton from formally hiring him.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It is becoming very obvious that Mrs. Clinton ignored the advice of the <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"White House\" href=\"http:\/\/maps.google.com\/maps?ll=38.8976694444,-77.03655&amp;spn=0.01,0.01&amp;q=38.8976694444,-77.03655 (White%20House)&amp;t=h\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"geolocation\">White House<\/a> and played by her own rules.<\/p>\n<p>It is also interesting that the emails the State Department released had certain items redacted that were not redacted in the emails that the <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"The New York Times\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"homepage\">New York Times<\/a> obtained. It is interesting to see what the State Department chose to redact. I strongly suggest following the link above to read the entire article in the Wall Street Journal.<\/p>\n<p>It is obvious to me (and I suspect to any thinking person) that the Clinton emails had been well scrubbed before they were released. It is also obvious that they were released just before Memorial Day when the American public would be least likely to pay attention to them. This is typical of the past behavior of the Clintons and could be expected to be typical of any future behavior should Mrs. Clinton be successful in her bid for the presidency.<\/p>\n<p>The article concludes:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>The larger question isn\u2019t Mr. Blumenthal\u2019s faux life of danger. It\u2019s why a potential Commander in Chief invested so much trust in such a figure. The Southern <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Gothic fiction\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Gothic_fiction\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"wikipedia\">Gothic novel<\/a> that is Clinton family political history\u2014with its melodrama, betrayals and paranoia\u2014has left them dependent on insular loyalists like Mr. Blumenthal whose opinions are never second-guessed. Voters should know they\u2019d not only be electing Hillary, and Bill, and Chelsea, but this entire menagerie.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Wall Street Journal posted an article today about the latest batch of Hillary Clinton&#8217;s emails released by the State Department. While there is no &#8216;smoking gun&#8217; in the emails as such, the emails reveal a State Department that was &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=25650\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3947,3174,6325,1457,9039,8558,8401,1178],"class_list":["post-25650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-benghazi","tag-bill-clinton","tag-clinton-foundation","tag-hillary-clinton","tag-sidney-blumenthal","tag-the-new-york-times","tag-the-wall-street-journal","tag-united-states-department-of-state"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25650"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25650\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25651,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25650\/revisions\/25651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}