Hillary Clinton’s concern over the November 2010 release of classified records to the Wikileaks outlet was on full display in the 7,000 pages of her emails that were published by the State Department Monday.
Many of the leaked cables were marked confidential — the same level of classification given to many of Clinton’s private emails, although some have been classified at a higher level.
Chelsea Manning, the official ultimately charged with giving the documents to Wikileaks, was sentenced to 35 years in prison for, among other offenses, a violation of the Espionage Act. The handling of Clinton’s emails is under FBI investigation under the same law.
Emails suggest Clinton was distressed by the Manning leak.
For example, Daniel Baer, a prominent State Department official working in Europe, wrote to several Clinton aides that he was “up in the middle of the night” constructing a “moral argument” for the secretary to use against the release of thousands of diplomatic cables on the Wikileaks website.
Jake Sullivan, director of policy planning at State, forwarded the memo to Clinton and said it was “worth a read.”
Sullivan and other aides passed Clinton press clippings of articles that condemned the Wikileaks release, which saw roughly 250,000 diplomatic cables published online in a massive State Department leak.
Although the decision of Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, to release the cables was hailed by some as a victory for global transparency, Clinton’s staff seemingly insulated her from stories that praised Wikileaks in any way.
Cheryl Mills, Clinton’s chief of staff, passed Clinton an internal memo that insisted only “anti-US writers and media” were using the Wikileaks cables “to skewer the United States” but that most journalists had moved on from the issue by early Dec. 2010.
State Department officials continued to provide Clinton with “Wikileaks updates” even on Christmas Eve, highlighting the importance of the issue in the secretary’s eyes.
Clinton was forced to confront the leak when she spoke with foreign diplomats in the months after the cables were released.
Her emails suggest the State Department was engaged in a coordinated effort to shape coverage of the Wikileaks cables to their favor, condemning the breach whenever possible.
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