Speechwriters going 100 hours without sleep, emails about gefilte fish and 'The Good Wife' plus countless pages blacked out for security: Hillary's 7,000 new email pages revealed – including 125 containing 'classified' information 

• State Department published about 7,000 pages of emails from Hillary's private home-brew server after scouring them for classified material
• A total of 125 messages were added to the 64 that were classified retroactively earlier in the summer
• State Department's own email help desk was in the dark about Hillary's address; she gushed over a new iPad she would later deny using for email
• Once praised an aide for going 100 hours without sleep to finish a speech; asked another staffer when she could find 'The Good Wife' on television 
• Clinton aides were reduced to using their own personal email addresses to communicate with her when messages failed to reach their official 'state.gov' accounts

By David Martosko, Us Political Editor For Dailymail.com

Published: 14:10 EST, 31 August 2015 | Updated: 09:16 EST, 1 September 2015

Hillary Clinton's private email account was a big enough secret at the State Department that the agency's computer help-desk experts didn't recognize her address when they saw it. 'They had no idea it was YOU,' her top aide Human Abedin remarked at the time. 

Although she would claim years later that she carried only a single email device – her personal Blackberry – out of 'convenience,' Clinton emailed her press guru in 2010 to ask for help learning to use her new iPad.

And the once-and-future presidential candidate couldn't get skim milk for her tea – and was at a loss to figure out what time to catch 'Parks and Recreation' or 'The Good Wife' on TV.

So she emailed an aide to help with both problems. Not the same aide, however, who went 100 hours without sleep so he could finish writing a speech for her.

These glimpses into Clinton's life as America's top diplomat came via a massive document dump released Monday night by the State Department – about 7,121 pages of emails from her infamous private server including 125 messages retroactively stamped 'classified' by the U.S. Intelligence Community.

MORE TROUBLE: Another 125 emails that once lived on Hillary Clinton's private server have been 'upgraded' to classified status, according to the State Department

ODDITIES: Hillary Clinton asked for skim milk in her tea and needed an aide to tell her what time her two favorite TV shows were on

EXPLAINING: State Department spokesman Mark Toner conceded to journalists Monday afternoon that the evening document-dump will include dozens of censored emails deemed too sensitive to release publicly

'EXCITING NEWS': Hillary asked communications aide Philippe Reines in 2010 to teach her how to use her new iPad, but would later insist that she only used a single email device at the State Department – her Blackberry

That brings to 189 the total of classified messages that Clinton and her campaign team will continue to insist weren't considered state secrets when she sent or received them.  

The public can only see bits and pieces of them, the portions that aren't considered too secret to public, and likely won't know what the fuss was about until 2035.

While those newly classified emails are mostly or entirely 'redacted' – blacked out – the thousands that remain provide a glimpse into the mundane, the bizarre and the politically curious.

Even the unclassified emails are often redacted, though, as part of the process of vetting and scrubbing documents before they are released under the Freedom Of Information Act.

One email, a 15-page draft of a speech on 'Internet freedom,' was wiped clean entirely. But the author at least got an attaboy from the boss.

An underling asked Hillary to make a point of praising Dr. Tomicah Tillemann, who 'went for almost 100 hours without sleep to get the speech done, under unusually trying circumstances.'

'I did once before speech and will do again,' she replied.

In a November 2010 message to Senator Barbara Mikulski, Clinton praised Maryland's then-governor Martin O'Malley, saying that 'he should be reelected by acclamation for steering the ship of state so well.'

O'Malley is now among her rivals for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination, and one of her fiercest critics.

Clinton once pinged an aide to ask for a printout of an email from noted ad executive Roy Spence, suggesting she should launch '"HRC University" ... To empower people everywhere with knowledge, purpose and passion so that they are destined – not lucky – to fully develop their God-given talents.'

She apparently liked the idea enough that she asked the same State Department staffer to print it again for her three weeks later.

AWKWARD: Clinton wrote a senator that Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley 'should be reelected by acclamation for steering the ship of state so well' – but that was before he was among her presidential rivals

NOT CLASSIFIED: Clinton asked two senior aides to weigh in on a shipment of Jewish Passover fish held up en route from Illinois to Israel in a trade dispute

And then there was her iPad, which communications adviser Philippe Reines referred to in email as her 'hPad.'

After asking Reines to teach her how to use the device, Clinton later wrote him asking him how to charge it and how to update a news reading app. 

Reines asked her if she had a wireless Internet connection.

'I don't know if I have wi-fi. How do I find out?' she responded.

Monday's batch of emails touched on serious issues that could frame Clinton's bid to be taken seriously amid flagging poll numbers and widespread voter concerns about her trustworthiness.

Hillary claimed in March, for instance, that her use of a private email address as secretary of state could never deprive the public of access to her communications records since so many of her messages were sent to underlings with official 'state.gov' addresses that would have archived them.

But at least two of her senior aides, the email records show, had trouble receiving those missives.

'As usual, your emails aren't showing up in my State account. Still working on that problem,' then-deputy chief of staff Jake Sullivan once wrote her.

Sullivan colleague Huma Abedin weighed in on a separate occasion when aide Lauren Jiloty also couldn't receive email from Clinton – and ended up using her own private email account as a quick fix.

'Well its clearly a state vs outside email issue,' Clinton heard from Abedin, who also had an address on the secretary's private server

'State has been trying to figure it out. So lj is getting all your emazils [sic] cause she's on her personal account too.'

The odder moments chronicled in the emails include a note from Clinton to Sen. Mikulski on the eve of the Obamacare law's passage, urging her to 'wrap this up in the Senate and go drink something unhealthy!'

Another email from Clinton was sent under the subject line 'Gefilte fish.' The entire message: 'Where are we on this?'

Nine shipping containers of the Passover seafood item were held up en route from Illinois to Israel amid a trade dispute. Clinton, an Illinois native, had interceded. 

Clinton wrote to a junior aide for help getting a chef to 'buy skim milk for me to have for my tea.'

And 'can you give me times for two TV shows: Parks and Recreation and The Good Wife?' she asked. 

Monday night's document dump is the fourth since Clinton handed over about half of her archived messages, following concerns that she used a private email address to conduct government business during her four years as secretary of state.

The latest tranche of emails is larger than the three previous releases combined. 

Agency spokesman Mark Toner briefed reporters Monday afternoon, conceding under intense questioning that dozens of emails had 'been subsequently upgraded classified.'

'THEY HAD NO IDEA IT WAS YOU': The computer help desk at Clinton's own State Department was in the dark about the personal email address she was using to conduct government business

He emphasized that 'the information we've upgraded was not marked classified at the time the emails were sent.' But Toner seemed to hedge his bets against future decision-making inside the U.S. Intelligence Community.

'That's our estimation right now,' he said.

But 'we have upgraded some – a number of these,' Toner said, signaling that former Secretary of State Clinton will face a new round of criticism over her decision to commingle those sensitive communications with her personal emails during her four years in office.

All the messages, including the 63 retroactively classified emails released in past months, resided on a private home-brew email server that she controlled, away from the prying eyes of government inspectors and Freedom Of Information Act officials, at her Chappaqua, New York home.

Toner also said he did not know of any cases of emails that were already released undergoing another round of scrutiny with an eye toward identifying more classified documents.

'That's not our belief,' he said. 'We stand by what's been released.'

The Associated Press reported that all of the newly classified material in the latest batch was upgraded to 'confidential,' not to the higher 'top secret' level that applied to two emails identified a month ago. 

Clinton said last week in Ankeny, Iowa during a presidential campaign stop that using a single self-monitored email account for both her personal and official communications was in retrospect a mistake.

She insisted, though, that it was legal and fell within the bounds of departmental policy.

'My use of personal email was allowed by the State Department. It clearly wasn’t the best choice,' Clinton told reporters.

'I should've used two emails: one personal, one for work. And I take responsibility for that decision, and I want to be as transparent as possible.'

Toner said that combined with earlier releases in May, June and July, Monday's document-dump will bring the State Department more than one-quarter of the way toward releasing the 55,000 pages of emails Clinton handed over late last year.

Lost, however, are a similar number – amounting to more than 30,000 messages – that Clinton ordered deleted. She first said in March that those messages were all 'personal' in nature. 

On Monday, Toner insisted that the entire State Department lives daily with the grave responsibility for safeguarding classified information, and that includes the agency's senior leadership.

DODUMENT DUMP: The State Department released thousands of pages of Clinton's emails Monday night, an exercise it will have to repeat monthly through next January

'I TAKE RESPONSIBILITY': Clinton admitted last week in Iowa that she made a mistake with her email handling choices, but insisted she did nothing illegal or against the State Department's rules

Asked about a section of the Foreign Affairs Manual in effect during Clinton's tenure which spelled out the rules for handling intelligence from foreign sources, he insisted that 'we, from the secretary on down, take the handling of classified materials and the rules surrounding those ... seriously.  

'We're all bound by –' he began to say, before rephrasing his answer.

'How we treat classified information is, as I said, an important component of the work we do.'

But asked moments later if he could state 'categorically' that Clinton 'followed the rules and the law,' Toner refused to take the bait.

'I'm just not going to answer that question,' he said. 'It's not our goal, it's not our function in this regard, in releasing these emails.'

'Our goal and our sole purpose when we look at these emails is to decide ... whether any of that material needs to be redacted and subsequently classified.'

Pressed further to pass judgment on Clinton's actions, Toner emphasized that 'there are other reviews underway.'

'And that's really for the inspector general and other entities that are out there looking at these broader questions,' he said. 

Comments (954)

Share what you think

• Newest
• Oldest
• Best rated
• Worst rated

 View all

The comments below have not been moderated.

 View all

The views expressed in the contents above are those of our users and do not necessarily reflect the views of MailOnline.

We are no longer accepting comments on this article.

Who is this week's top commenter? Find out now