According to emails sent to and from former Sec. Hillary Clinton’s private email address, U.S. officials were aware of “credible” threats against U.S. personnel in Benghazi a year before the Sept. 11, 2012 attacks. The emails were released Friday by the Department of State
An email sent June 10, 2011 from State Department official Jacob Sullivan to Clinton mentions a “credible threat” against U.S. officials. The email, entitled “Hotel in Benghazi,” notes that Diplomatic Security (DS) was going to evacuate everyone.
“There is credible threat info against the hotel that our team is using – and the rest of the Intl community is using, for that matter,” according to the 2011 email. “DS going to evacuate our people to alt locations. Info suggested attack in next 24-48 hours. Will keep you posted.”
The email is part of hundreds of other records released by the State Department at the request of members of Congress who are investigating the attack on a U.S. facility in Benghazi, Libya. The attack resulted in the deaths of four Americans, including the U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens.
In the wake of the attack, the Obama administration claimed it was a spontaneous protest based on an obscure YouTube trailer for a film called “The Innocence of Muslims.” But as more came out about the attack, it became clear it was a premeditated attack intended to strike at U.S. holdings.
The Republican-led House created a committee to look into the attack. This committee, led by South Carolina Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy, has been wrangling for months to obtain Clinton’s emails. Lawmakers say emails from her private account, which she used for official government business, may hold the key to uncovering what exactly the Obama administration knew about the attacks.
“More than six months after the Select Committee first discovered Secretary Clinton’s unusual email arrangement with herself, and after the media discovered Secretary Clinton relied exclusively on a personal server housing a personal email account eschewing any official email address, State Department transferred 300 messages exclusively reviewed and released by her own lawyers,” Gowdy said in a statement.
“These lawyers, it must be noted, owed and continue to owe a fiduciary responsibility to Secretary Clinton to protect her interests,” he added. “To assume a self-selected public record is complete, when no one with a duty or responsibility to the public had the ability to take part in the selection, requires a leap in logic no impartial reviewer should be required to make and strains credibility.”
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