The CIA has told US Congress that the name of an alleged secret agency source, mentioned but then partially redacted by the US Department of State from an e-mail received on former US secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton’s private server was not considered by the agency to be secret at all.
At issue is Moussa Koussa, a one-time intelligence chief for former Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi, and the question of whether or not his name should have been treated as a secret in an e-mail Clinton received four years ago from a close confidant.
US Republicans, who are trying to show Clinton mishandled classified information while serving as chief diplomat, have argued that Koussa’s name should not have been included in the e-mail she received on her private server from Sidney Blumenthal.
Photo: Reuters
However, the CIA, weighing in after the Republicans made their accusation earlier this month, has told lawmakers that Koussa’s name was not classified, according to correspondence between the spy agency and officials of the US House of Representatives panel set up to investigate the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks on a US diplomatic facility and nearby spy base in Benghazi, Libya.
After months of delays and political machinations, Clinton is scheduled to appear before the House Benghazi committee tomorrow to answer questions about her handling of the 2012 attacks, her controversial private e-mail server and the Libya policy of the administration of US President Barack Obama.
After reviewing Clinton’s e-mails in response to Freedom of Information Act requests, the Department of State made numerous redactions, declaring that in some cases, the material should be considered classified.
Earlier this month, in a reference to Koussa, the Benghazi committee chairman, Republican Trey Gowdy, complained that Clinton, the front-runner in the Democratic presidential campaign, had received an e-mail on her private server in March 2011 with the name of “a human source.”
That represents “some of the most protected information in our intelligence community, the release of which could jeopardize not only national security, but also human lives,” Gowdy said.
“Armed with that information, secretary Clinton forwarded the e-mail to a colleague — debunking her claim that she never sent any classified information from her private e-mail address,” he added.
Sources familiar with the redaction process said the Department of State did redact Koussa’s name from the e-mail in question, but that the department had done this as part of standard practice to protect the privacy of individuals and not because the department considered the data classified.
In his letter to Gowdy on Sunday, US Representative Elijah Cummings, the Benghazi committee’s top Democrat, accused Gowdy of trying to “inflate” the significance of the redacted information and suggested that the “standard operating procedure” of the Benghazi committee had “become to put out information publicly that is inaccurate and out of context in order to attack secretary Clinton for political reasons.”
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS