Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) with grave of Senator Joseph McCarthy in the background.
Records released by the National Archives under the Freedom of Information Act connect a staffer from the House Committee on Benghazi to Michael Schmidt, the New York Times reporter who broke the story about Hillary Clinton's use of a private email account for government business when she was Secretary of State. NARA's records suggest that Schmidt deliberately fabricated a tale to harm Clinton's reputation instead of reporting the story accurately.
The FOIA records include an email thread that circulated through the federal recordkeeping agency on February 25 & 26 as Paul Wester, the US Chief Records Officer, and other senior managers gathered information for the Committee staffer's questions about Clinton's email. NARA officials continued their discussion on February 27 after Schmidt contacted them. He had heard about Clinton's private email account and he wanted to verify the information he received for an article he was writing about it.
On February 28, Wester tied the Committee staffer and the reporter together in a message to one of his colleagues:
Since about midday Thursday a staff member from the Special Committee on Benghazi has asked a series of increasingly specific questions related to the records management practices at the Department of State. Two of the specific questions was how did the State Department capture personal emails by senior officials . . . Michael Schmidt appears to be a Washington-based political reporter for the NYT, but he has done work on cybersecurity and national security issues. |
The information NARA provided included
a favorable evaluation of the State Department's email archiving:
Overall, the State Department records management program and staff are considered very strong. NARA has awarded the State Department two Archivist Achievement Awards in Records Management in the past decade. They also have strong Records Management Self Assessment scores. Like most Federal agencies, the State Department currently has a "print and file" policy for their email; however, like most agencies trying to meet the Managing Government Records (M1416) 2016 deadline for managing all email electronically, and the requirements in PL 113187 they are considering new policies. |
When
Schmidt's article appeared on March 2, it was heavily weighted with untrue statements. It said that Clinton
may have broken rules, and
possibly violated policy which was
alarming to NARA officials.
Instead of quoting the officials who answered his request, Schmidt quoted a former-official who left the agency. Another official said it was a shame that Clinton's email records weren't archived automatically but the FOIA records NARA released show that the State Department didn't have an automatic archiving system during Clinton's tenure and it is still struggling to implement one.
These observations match what the Benghazi Committee Ranking Member (and national treasure) Elijah Cummings said on March 3 and March 6 as the Associated Press and other news outlets added to the untruths printed by the Times.
Since then, the media launched a non-stop series of attacks against Clinton, saturating the public with lies that rely on anonymous sources and unseen documents. Even when the political propaganda is exposed as false, it echoes everywhere. The newspapers print corrections but they remain incompetent when it comes to telling the truth.
The Times' Executive Editor has suggested that its reporters could not have done anything differently because they relied on anonymous senior government officials, which the paper's Public Editor later explained included tips from "Capitol Hill."
I disagree. The Times could have insisted on seeing the documents they were describing. Or, if the Times spoke with Republicans in Congress, even off the record, they could have checked their facts with me or other Committee Democrats.
Rep. Elijah Cummings
http://democrats.benghazi.house.gov/...
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On July 23, 2015, the New York Times erroneously reported that Clinton was the target of a criminal probe into her email use, relying heavily on anonymous sources. However, after the facts emerged, the Times
issued corrections to clarify that the Inspector General’s referral was not criminal in nature.
The Inspectors General of the Intelligence Community and State Department specifically stated that it was a security referral made for counterintelligence purposes.
Rep. Cummings points out one of the latest examples of hatchet job reporting.
Politico ran a story on the front page of its website entitled, “What Cheryl Mills Told Benghazi Investigators.” Relying on multiple anonymous Republican sources, Politico led with the claim that “one of the biggest surprises” from the interview was that Ms. Mills reviewed the report by the Accountability Review Board (ARB) and made suggestions to it.
The problem is that this claim was already known—and debunked—two years earlier
A full copy of Ambassador Pickering’s deposition transcript is posted here, and the key excerpts are set forth below:
Q: And did you receive any feedback from the Secretary’s staff about how the Secretary would like the report to look?
A: I did not. Through the staff, with respect to a document we made available to the Secretary prior to our discussion meeting with them. I believe subsequent to the discussion meeting they provided us with three or four or five thoughts that they would like us to consider. They had no editorial rights. And we reviewed those, all of us at the end, and some we thought were acceptable and some we thought were not acceptable.
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Cummings says that Gowdy refuses to investigate the source of the deliberately misleading leaks and that they must be coming from him or someone in his office. Since the witnesses are heard in private, the public has no way of verifying reports about their testimony. Cummings is calling for the immediate release of the transcripts of witness interviews. This is a partisan witch hunt and Democrats are the designated witches, just like Leftists were in the 1950s when Senator Joseph McCarthy used similar tactics.
Take the time to visit the House.gov website where Rep. Cummings has compiled a remarkable catalogue of Republican abuse. Since the media isn't reporting the truth, there's almost no other way to know what's really going on.