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The Obama administration's curiously meh Christmas Eve data dump on Benghazi
Townhall.com ^ | December 26, 2015 | ED MORRISEY

Posted on 12/26/2015 10:35:05 AM PST by Kaslin

What’s better than a Friday afternoon document dump? The Holiday Eve Document Dump. It’s the Christmas gift that keeps on giving … to government officials that want a pretense at transparency while keeping too much notice falling on embarrassing revelations. The Obama administration used that option on Christmas Eve, but as reported by Politico’s Hanna Trudo, so much is redacted that it may not have made much difference anyway:

Thursday’s document dump, put out by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in compliance with a Freedom of Information request, includes correspondence sent from American intelligence officials in 2011 and 2012.

The emails edited to conceal what is considered to be sensitive information provide few new details about the lethal September 2012 terrorist attack on the diplomatic mission in Libya or American-born Al Qaeda recruiter Anwar al-Awlaki.

In the first email, only two of 17 lines of text were not blacked out. Another email consists of the text “Attached it the final draft; we need comment/coordination by 1000, Friday (tomorrow) 19 October 2012,” followed completely by blacked-out text. Other emails consist of the text of news clippings from Reuters, the Washington Post and other organizations. …

Other memos grouped with the Thursday morning release include specific instructions from 2013 on how to implement existing protocol on protecting intelligence, as well as a schedule of a counterintelligence executive from 2015.

The Houston Chronicle wasn’t impressed, either:

“Acutely redacted” isn’t an overstatement. Practically the only items that aren’t redacted out of this are several media reports passed around the intel communities for “situational awareness” of the political landscape. The redactions are to keep classified information under wraps, according to the codes linked to the blacked-out text. The original messages were classified at the highest levels: TOP SECRET, NOFORN (no foreign dissemination), and designations for compartmentalization appear throughout the 16 pages of e-mails. The Awlaki memo was released separately and is lightly redacted, apparently only to protect the identity of an intelligence operative who worked on the review.

What doesn’t appear is anything new of significance about either the Benghazi attack, although there is a tantalizing reference to “an IC-coordinated summary of our assessment of the threat in advance … and our assessment post-attack” that is dated from October 22, 2012. That report went to “our oversight committees on the Hill” at the same time, and was classified TOP SECRET//HCS/SI-G/TK/ORCON/NOFORN. Interestingly, that message alone has a declassification code of “50X1-HUM,” which means that it bypasses the regular 25-year declassify date and is instead scheduled for default declassification in 2062. I’ll be 99 years old by that time, so maybe one of my younger Townhall colleagues will have to follow up on this lead.

Otherwise, we have a dump without much data. It seems like an odd opportunity to waste, but perhaps the FOIA release will turn out to be less responsive than required. It’s worth watching, even if it’s into our dotage.


TOPICS: Editorial; Government
KEYWORDS: anwaralawlaki; benghazi; benghaziemails; classified; dni; newsdump; redactedemails; statedepartment

1 posted on 12/26/2015 10:35:05 AM PST by Kaslin
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To: Kaslin

All from what was promised to be the most ‘transarent’ administration in history.


2 posted on 12/26/2015 11:10:33 AM PST by Sasparilla
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To: Kaslin
"The Obama administration's curiously meh Christmas Eve data dump on Benghazi"

What the heck is "meh"?

3 posted on 12/26/2015 11:13:09 AM PST by jackibutterfly
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To: Kaslin

4 posted on 12/26/2015 11:17:40 AM PST by Bon mots
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To: jackibutterfly

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/meh?s=t


5 posted on 12/26/2015 11:30:32 AM PST by ncpatriot
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To: jackibutterfly

meh = underwhelming.


6 posted on 12/26/2015 11:31:10 AM PST by ctdonath2 (History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the week or the timid. - Ike)
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To: Kaslin

So... as SOS, did Hillary receive this SECRET... etc. email on her PRIVATE server ?


7 posted on 12/26/2015 11:38:15 AM PST by UCANSEE2 (Lost my tagline on Flight MH370. Sorry for the inconvenience.)
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To: Kaslin

Saddest and sickest aspect of all of this is that we now know the fabricated story about a video has managed a shrug from the American sovereigns who are being usurped.


8 posted on 12/26/2015 11:52:19 AM PST by MHGinTN (Is it really all relative, Mister Einstein?)
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To: ctdonath2; ncpatriot

Got it! Thanks much.


9 posted on 12/26/2015 11:57:04 AM PST by jackibutterfly
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To: UCANSEE2

“Thursday’s document dump, put out by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in compliance with a Freedom of Information request, includes correspondence sent from American intelligence officials in 2011 and 2012.”

This is coming from a different suit and source than Hillary’s server. The FBI (and others) should catalog which of these say they were sent or cc’ed to Hillary and compare to what Hillary turned over or they have recovered from the server. (But my expectation is that most of the messages Hillary caused to be deleted from her server were crony/corruption oriented, rather than government info.)


10 posted on 12/26/2015 12:01:56 PM PST by Chewbarkah
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To: jackibutterfly

Meh is Jeh Johnson’s younger brother.


11 posted on 12/26/2015 12:15:57 PM PST by Organic Panic
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To: MHGinTN

Bttt


12 posted on 12/27/2015 11:52:12 AM PST by Pagey (HELL is The 2nd Term of a POTUS who is a MALICIOUS DIVIDER of humans)
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To: Chewbarkah
This is coming from a different suit and source than Hillary's server.

I didn't mean it originated from her (her server). I meant that she was a recipient of these particular emails, since they involved foreign affairs, which is what the Department of State is supposed to be in charge of. I cannot see how these emails would NOT be sent to her in the normal course of events while she was SOS.

If they WERE sent to her(on her private server), her claim that none of the emails was considered SECRET/NOFORN etc. etc. is PROOF she is lying.

13 posted on 12/27/2015 1:07:38 PM PST by UCANSEE2 (Lost my tagline on Flight MH370. Sorry for the inconvenience.)
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To: UCANSEE2

I certainly want an investigation along those lines. I have not seen images of actual messages, and do not know if any were sent to or cc’ed to Hillary. It would be interesting to analyze what e-mail address they have been sent to. Various reports imply that Hillary evaded direct communication with any of the “little people”; important national security messages were sent to minions who digested them, or cut/pasted them to strip out those nasty labels, and told her what to think. This e-mail dump could help illuminate many things.


14 posted on 12/27/2015 3:11:45 PM PST by Chewbarkah
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To: Bon mots

bttt!

Great post Bon mots.


15 posted on 12/27/2015 3:35:35 PM PST by Balata
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