State Department officials appear to have colluded with CBS News’ “60 Minutes” in 2011 to plant specific interview questions for Julian Assange, the leader of a hacker group that is responsible for illegally obtaining and publishing thousands of classified U.S. intelligence cables.
The revelation that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s team worked with CBS News came this week after State Department officials released a batch of Democratic frontrunner’s work emails.
“Madame Secretary, a very quick update. I just received confirmation from 60 Minutes that a piece on Julian Assange will air Sunday night,” former Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs Philip Crowley wrote in a 2011 email.
“[Assange] will be the only person featured. We had made a number of suggestions for outside experts and former diplomats to interview to ‘balance’ the piece,” the note added. “60 Minutes assures me that they raised a number of questions and concerns we planted with them during the course of the interview. We will be prepared to respond to the narrative Assange presents during the program.”
A “60 Minutes” spokesman, however, disputes Crowley’s characterization that the State Department “planted” questions for the news group’s 2011 interview.
“The idea of a ‘plant’ is as preposterous as this email writer’s attempt to get credit from his boss,” spokesman Kevin Tedesco toldCNNMoney. “We spoke to many sources for this story.”
The “60 Minutes” State Department email was released at the same time that a separate note showed that Clinton was notified of her interview questions ahead of a 2009 appearance on NBC News’ “Meet the Press.”
Another email released this week shows that the State Department tried — and failed — to convince the Washington Post not to publish un-redacted cables obtained illegally by Wikileaks.
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