Bullshit Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-SC) has accused former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of compromising classified information and, more specifically, the identify of a Libyan CIA informant whose name was included in emails exchanged between Clinton and longtime aide Sidney Blumenthal.
The information was not classified, however, according to the CIA.
As it turns out, Benghazi Committee Chairman Gowdy added his own redaction to material that was never redacted to begin with.
Representative Elijah Cummings, the highest ranking Democrat on the Benghazi Committee, has published a direct rebuttal to Chairman Gowdy including information provided to the committee by the CIA.
In your letter, you went to great lengths to highlight the gravity of your accusation, stating:
"This information, the name of a human source, is some of the most protected information in our intelligence community, the release of which could jeopardize not only national security but human lives."
To further inflate your claim, you placed your own redactions over the name of the individual with the words, “redacted due to sources and methods.” To be clear, these redactions were not made, and these words were not added, by any agency of the federal government responsible for enforcing classification guidelines.
Predictably, commentators began repeating your accusations in even more extreme terms, suggesting in headlines for example that “Clinton Burns CIA Libya Contact.”
Contrary to your claims, the CIA yesterday informed both the Republican and Democratic staffs of the Select Committee that they do not consider the information you highlighted in your letter to be classified. Specifically, the CIA confirmed that “the State Department consulted with the CIA on this production, the CIA reviewed these documents, and the CIA made no redactions to protect classified information.”
There you have it. Chairman Gowdy appears to be deciding for himself what should or should not be classified and then making accusations against Hillary Clinton based on his own classifications.
This is amateur hour.
Chairman Gowdy has accused Hillary Clinton of compromising national security, but I have a strong hunch that no one would even be aware that this Libyan contact existed had Gowdy not levied these accusations. Does Gowdy suspect Libyan terrorists or separatists were able to infiltrate the Clinton email server and comb through it in search of an elusive contact whose identify was never considered classified?
I laugh while asking the question, but that is ultimately what this "investigation" boils down to. This record-long committee is centered around a nondescript conspiracy theory that changes depending on who you ask to explain it.
Chairman Gowdy has responded by saying he will continue to make shit up.
"We will continue to redact certain information to protect sensitive information regardless of how others treat that information."