Honolulu Star-Advertiser

Wednesday, December 11, 2024 78° Today's Paper


Top News

Clinton’s State Dept. calendar missing scores of entries

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, rang the New York Stock Exchange opening bell in Sept. 2009, accompanied by then-NYSE CEO Duncan L. Niederauer, in New York. Television cameras rolled when Clinton appeared on the central balcony of the New York Stock Exchange to ring the opening bell, just minutes after she attended a private breakfast in September 2009 with influential Wall Street and business leaders. But the identities of her breakfast guests would be left off of her official State Department calendar, omissions that are among scores of names and events missing from Clinton’s historical record of her daily activities as secretary of state, an Associated Press review found.

WASHINGTON » An Associated Press review of the official calendar Hillary Clinton kept as secretary of state identified at least 75 meetings with longtime political donors, Clinton Foundation contributors and corporate and other outside interests that were not recorded or omitted the names of those she met. The fuller details of those meetings were included in files the State Department turned over to AP after it sued the government in federal court.

The missing entries raise new questions about how Clinton and her inner circle handled government records documenting her State Department tenure — in this case, why the official chronology of her four-year term does not closely mirror the other, more detailed records of her daily meetings.

At a time when Clinton’s private email system is under scrutiny by an FBI criminal investigation, the calendar omissions reinforce concerns that she sought to eliminate the “risk of the personal being accessible” — as she wrote in an email exchange that she failed to turn over to the government but was subsequently uncovered in a top aide’s inbox.

The AP found the omissions by comparing the 1,500-page calendar with separate planning schedules supplied to Clinton by aides in advance of each day’s events. The names of at least 114 outsiders who met with Clinton were missing from her calendar, the records show.

No known federal laws were violated and some omissions could be blamed on Clinton’s highly fluid schedule, which sometimes forced late cancellations. But only seven meetings in Clinton’s planning schedules were replaced by substitute events on her official calendar. More than 60 other events listed in Clinton’s planners were omitted entirely in her calendar, tersely noted or described only as “private meetings” — all without naming those who met with her.

Clinton campaign spokesman Nick Merrill said Thursday night that the multiple discrepancies between her State Department calendar and her planning schedules “simply reflect a more detailed version in one version as compared to another, all maintained by her staff.”

Merrill said that Clinton “has always made an effort to be transparent since entering public life, whether it be the release of over 30 years of tax returns, years of financial disclosure forms, or asking that 55,000 pages of work emails from her time of secretary of state be turned over to the public.”

In one key omission, Clinton’s State Department calendar dropped the identities of a dozen major Wall Street and business leaders who met with her during a private breakfast discussion at the New York Stock Exchange in September 2009, The meeting occurred minutes before Clinton appeared in public at the exchange to ring the market’s ceremonial opening bell.

Despite the omission, Clinton’s State Department planning schedules from the same day listed the names of all Clinton’s breakfast guests — most of whose firms had lobbied the government and donated to her family’s global charity. The event was closed to the press and merited only a brief mention in her calendar, which omitted all her guests’ names — among them Blackstone Group Chairman Steven Schwarzman, PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi and then-New York Bank of Mellon CEO Robert Kelly.

Clinton’s calendar also repeatedly omitted private dinners and meetings with political donors, policy sessions with groups of corporate leaders and “drop-bys” with old Clinton campaign hands and advisers. Among those whose names were omitted from her calendar were longtime adviser Sidney Blumenthal, consultant and former Clinton White House chief of staff Thomas “Mack” McLarty, former energy lobbyist Joseph Wilson and entertainment magnate and Clinton campaign bundler Haim Saban.

The AP first sought Clinton’s calendar and schedules from the State Department in August 2013, but the agency would not acknowledge even that it had the material. After nearly two years of delay, the AP sued the State Department in March 2015. The department agreed in a court filing last August to turn over Clinton’s calendar, and provided the documents in November. After noticing discrepancies between Clinton’s calendar and some schedules, the AP pressed in court for all of Clinton’s planning material. The U.S. has released about one-third of those planners to the AP, so far.

The State Department censored both sets of documents for national security and other reasons, but those changes were made after the documents were turned over to the State Department at the end of Clinton’s tenure.

The documents obtained by the AP do not show who specifically logged entries in Clinton’s calendar or who edited the material. Clinton’s emails and other records show that she and two close aides, deputy chief of staff Huma Abedin and scheduling assistant Lona J. Valmoro, held weekly meetings and emailed almost every day about Clinton’s plans. According to the recent inspector general’s audit and a court declaration made last December by the State Department’s acting executive secretary, Clinton’s aides had access to her calendar through a government Microsoft Outlook account. Both Abedin and Valmoro were political appointees at the State Department and are now aides in her presidential campaign.

Unlike Clinton’s planning schedules, which were sent to Clinton each morning, her calendar was edited after each event, the AP’s review showed. Some calendar entries were accompanied by Valmoro emails — indicating she may have added those entries. Every meeting entry also included both the planned time of the event and the actual time — showing that Clinton’s calendar was being used to document each meeting after it ended.

Former senior State Department logistics officials and government records experts interviewed by the AP said that secretaries of state have wide latitude in keeping their schedules — despite federal laws and agency rules overseeing the archiving of calendars and warning against altering or deleting records. Omissions in Clinton’s calendar could undermine the document’s historical accuracy, particularly its depictions of Clinton’s access to political, corporate and other influences, experts said.

“It’s clear that any outside influence needs to be clearly identified in some way to at least guarantee transparency. That didn’t happen,” said Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight, a nonpartisan government reform group. “These discrepancies are striking because of her possible interest at the time in running for the presidency.”

When Clinton met in September 2009 with her 12 corporate breakfast guests at the New York Stock Exchange, her planning schedule that morning listed the hourlong event as “CEO breakfast discussion and New York Stock Exchange opening bell ceremony,” adding that no press would be allowed.

Besides Schwarzman, Nooyi and Kelly, Clinton’s other guests were Fabrizio Freda, CEO of the Estee Lauder Companies Inc.; Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks Corp.; Lewis Frankfort, chairman of Coach Inc.; Ellen Kullman, then-CEO of DuPont; David M. Cote, CEO of Honeywell International Inc.; James Tisch, president of Loews Corp.; John D. Wren, CEO of Omnicom Group; then-McGraw Hill Companies chairman Harold McGraw III; and James Taiclet, chairman of the American Tower Corp. Also attending was then-NYSE CEO Duncan Niederauer, who later accompanied Clinton when she rang the stock exchange bell.

As she opened the day’s trading session, Clinton cited Wall Street’s resurgence after the 2008 recession. “Coming back as secretary of state after all that we’ve done in the last year to try to pull ourselves out of this economic downturn is very exciting,” she said.

Details about Clinton’s private conversation with her corporate guests were not included in her records. Four of the attendees — Schwarzman, Nooyi, Cote and Kullman — headed companies that later donated to Clinton’s pet diplomatic project of that period, the U.S. pavilion at the 2010 Shanghai Expo. All the firms represented except Coach lobbied the government in 2009; Blackstone, Honeywell, Omnicom and DuPont lobbied the State Department that year. Schwarzman and Frankfort have personally donated to the Clinton Foundation, and the other firms — except for American Tower and New York Bank of Mellon — also contributed to the Clinton charity.

P.J. Crowley, a State Department spokesman for Clinton at the time, told the AP that Clinton’s vision of “21st century statecraft” included exchanging views with corporate leaders and promoting public-private partnerships. “That was certainly reflected in her day-to-day schedule, her travel and her global outreach,” Crowley said.

Clinton’s calendar listed meetings with 124 business leaders and political donors and loyalists, but not with 114 others who were identified by the AP’s review. In some cases, repeat Clinton visitors were listed in her calendar for some meetings, but not for others.

Four meetings with S. Daniel Abraham, a multimillionaire who founded the Center for Mideast Peace, were noted in Clinton’s calendar. But in four other sessions — including two listed only as “private meeting” — Abraham’s name was omitted. Abraham, a prolific fundraiser for Clinton’s 2008 campaign who has donated $3 million to a super PAC backing Clinton in 2016, told the AP last year that he and Clinton typically discussed Mideast policy.

“The fact that some information was not captured isn’t necessarily a sign of bad faith,” said Steven Aftergood, a government records expert at the Federation of American Scientists. He added, “It’s obviously more important to have a complete record than a scattershot one.”

35 responses to “Clinton’s State Dept. calendar missing scores of entries”

  1. Keonigohan says:

    hiLIARy is a P.O.W….Piece of Work. A proven LIAR, has American Blood on her hands.
    She simply is NOT QUALIFIED, INCOMPETENT to be POTUS…Bernie said that.!

  2. kiragirl says:

    She is dishonest and cannot be trusted.

  3. yobo says:

    I’m shocked that SA would put out a negative article concerning Hillary.

    I know hawaii is a one-party state, however you one-partiers should really take a close look at what Hillary’s ‘crooked’ past has produced.

    She’s a LIAR and above the law.

    Tune into FOX NEWs channels. Watch O’Reilly. High profile/reputable people are jumping on the band-wagon. Enough said.

  4. noheawilli says:

    We have the absolute 2 worst main candidates for POTUS ever and that why I’m voting for Gary Johnson.

    • wiliki says:

      Bernie is voting for Clinton.

      • hawaiikone says:

        I’d be surprised if he did. My money would be on Johnson, as Bernie seems to be a reasonably honest man who values his integrity. We know who you’re voting for…

      • yobo says:

        I can’t believe that Bernie would be voting for Clinton. Bernie’s & Trumps values follow more closely than Billary & Bernie. Why would Bernie vote for Billary after stating that she wasn’t qualified to be POTUS ?

        It follows the same reasoning as Bernie’s followers of which 24% will vote for Trump, not Billary.

        Voting ballot is secret. These are career politicians. They say something and do exactly the opposite.

    • Buckykat says:

      Count me for Johnson as well. Hillary is a known evil. The orange Cheezus is unknown. For all we know he’s being paid by Hillary to pretend he’s sort of Republican.

  5. rytsuru says:

    You really want to talk about lying? How is this one: http://gawker.com/hours-after-brexit-vote-leader-of-leave-movement-adm-1782570341

    A little naive to expect that career politicians have clean closets. But let’s face it. The choice of Hillary or Trump is like picking Nixon or Hitler.

  6. wiliki says:

    Very trivial discrepancies. shouldn’t her staff maintain her schedule? How they do that is their own business,

  7. WizardOfMoa says:

    Go for the third choice. These two have too much baggages, should anyone of them becomes President they’ll be spending more time explaining and defending their personal history than doing their job as the President! In addition, it’s time for a radical change from the two dominant parties and ease into the novel and uncharted third party.

  8. AhiPoke says:

    It still amazes me that this liar and a cheat is able to convince so many people to support her for the highest political office in this country and the world. Maybe our political system has led us to this low point where you have to be a liar and a cheat to not only win but be willing to drop whatever morals you may have once had to stomach being in the system. It’s a sad state of affairs when your vote goes to the candidate you dislike/distrust the least.

  9. justmyview371 says:

    She has some memory gaps.

  10. haroldm says:

    Uh-oh…time to crank up the right wing conspiracy machine!

  11. fiveo says:

    What really amazes is how a low life like Hillary Clinton can actually be the presumptive democratic candidate for the Presidency of the United States.
    Those who support her despite her despicable record must either be like her or have been living in a cave over the past two decades and totally out of it.

  12. 962042015 says:

    It’s Bush’s fault, no wait, it’s Trump’s fault, no no wait, it’s the Republicans’ fault, no no no wait, it’s the NRA’s fault, no no no no wait, it’s rayyyyyyyy-sist, no no no no no wait, it’s Fox News’ fault…..

  13. lespark says:

    According to people who aid and abet, Hillary has zero chance of being indicted. Zero. She”ll probably have another clot to buy sometime to hire more attorneys to come up with more cockamamie without incriminating the POTUS, AG, FBI Director. Bernie, it’s not over until the Fat Lady sings. But then again, that old codger is not stupid. He knew all along.

Leave a Reply