Hillary;s Clean-up Crew

POSTED ON APRIL 9, 2015 BY SCOTT JOHNSON IN HILLARY CLINTON

ENTER SID BLUMENTHAL

Jeff Gerth and Sam Biddle explore an important sidebar both to the affair of the Hillary Clinton homebrew email server and to the Benghazi scandal: “Private emails reveal ex-Clinton aide’s secret spy network.” Long story short: enter Sid Blumenthal, one of the most unsavory characters of the Clinton era.

Enter Sid Blumenthal along with Tyler Drumheller and Cody Shearer, that is. Mark Hemingway reviews the triumvirate in “Meet the men behind Hillary Clinton’s private ‘spy network’”

Ed Morrissey finds NBC’s Chuck Todd commenting regarding Blumenthal that “nothing regarding Blumenthal surprises me,” but Blumenthal enters the story from left field. Gerth and Biddle report that Blumenthal et al. communicated information in the nature of intelligence with Madam Hillary during her tenure as Secretary of State. They reported to Clinton at her private email address.

Hemingway explores each of the characters involved here and concludes:

If Hillary Clinton’s “secret spy network” involved the likes of Blumenthal, Drumheller, and Shearer — men whose past deeds suggest they may not be trustworthy — this ought to because for serious alarm. At a minimum, it demands that Congressional overseers take a closer look at what these people were doing on behalf of Hillary Clinton. Bear in mind, this team wasn’t just sending Hillary Clinton intelligence briefings. They had contracted out to a company, Osprey Global Solutions, run by a former General and Delta Force member, David L. Grange, to do fieldwork and intelligence gathering in Tunisia.

We know this spy ring was not secure — after all, Blumenthal’s emails were hacked and the intelligence reports Clinton was receiving were leaked a year before the State Department asked for Clinton’s emails. Other questions remain: Since Blumenthal, Drumheller, and Shearer were not acting in an official capacity, who was paying for their efforts? Was Clinton sharing the intelligence that these men were involved in gathering so that it could be confirmed by official intelligence agencies such as the CIA? If not, how did she know these intelligence assessments were reliable? Did these intelligence gathering efforts influence her decisions as Secretary of State, and if they did, how so?

There are many unanswered questions here.

When it comes to Sid Blumenthal, Dick Morris knows what he’s talking about. He too puts forward unanswered questions on the revelations so far in “What’s with the emails to Hillary from secret spook Sid Blumenthal? And who was bankrolling his secret ops?”

Morris asks, among other things: “What was Sidney Blumenthal doing running a foreign intelligence network and reporting to the Secretary of State? He has absolutely no experience in foreign affairs. None. His major credential is that he is close to Hillary and he can push her buttons. And, he’s willing to do anything and say anything to protect the Clintons.”

This story has barely registered so far, but one can only hope that Rep. Gowdy will get to the bottom of it in his investigation of Benghazi.