i think it is imminently fair to ask why sidney blumenthal had unfettered access to you, madame secretary, with whatever he wanted to talk about, and there s not a single solitary e-mail to or from you, to or from ambassador stephens. there is a villain in the gop version of the gop benghazi story, it was sidney blumenthal, including many discussioning politics and the situation in libya. the republican majority seems to have been troubled that blumenthal, a private citizen, may have had better access to the secretary of state than ambassador chris stephens, who was part of the state department infrastructure with long established systems for secured communication. clinton said most of her communications were not conducted by e-mail. a point corroborated by former ambassador michael mcfaul. as ambassador in russia, i enjoyed multiple ways to communicate with secretary clinton.
to do this in a bipartisan way, and now, i mean, this committee has just, you know, totally destroyed that approach. congressman, thank you for your time on this busy day. thank you, chris. joining me now, senior writer for newsweek and author of comprehensive guide to benghazi. curt, you ve been following this quite a bit. the congressman mentioned the bombing in beirut in 1983. my understanding is that you actually got a survivor of that bombing today as they watched this hearing, is that right? after the hearing actually. it really summed up everything here, because the hearings today were easily the most embarrassing i have ever seen. and this is somebody who was serving overseas. this was somebody serving in one of the most dangerous places in the world at this point. at that point. this is somebody who was in the building when the car bomb blew up and destroyed the building. and what she wrote is, we were patriotic and respectful.
stephens certainly did, correct? yes. gop obsession with whether ambassador chris stephens could reach secretary clinton by e-mail was batted down by my next guest. former u.s. ambassador to russia michael mcfaul. ambassador, you basically said today as this was going on, i had a lot of ways of interacting with the secretary, they weren t e-mail. what do you mean by that? well, i was just watching the i was on a plane actually and listening to the back and forth about e-mail. it just struck me that maybe people don t understand how communications work in the state department or in the u.s. government. the main way of communicating with the secretary is through a system of cables. now, that s an ancient word, but it s electronic and it works kind of like e-mail by the way. and you communicate to your assistant secretary or the undersecretary or when very urgent to the secretary of state. and if it s something that you want to do classified, it s all classified, but if you want t
but third, remember, the state department and the u.s. government is a giant bureaucracy, and it wouldn t work if every ambassador was e-mailing the secretary every day. instead what you have is an interagency policy process. it starts with, i m going to use a lot of acronyms here, the icp, the interagency policy committee. for me, that was russia. then the deputy s committee, the principal s committee. and you interact with your colleagues to formulate policy and deal with issues, including diplomatic security issues, which were an issue for me as ambassador out in moscow. that s a chain of command, if you will, that then goes up to the secretary, up to the president ultimately for them to make decisions. that s the way the system works. maybe it should be changed. but then we should have a debate about the system of communication in the u.s. government, because i m sure it worked this way when i was in government for five years, and i know it probably worked the same
e-mail was never one of them. nevertheless, at least one republican remained concerned that clinton would have more contact with an old friend than an ambassador in the field. ambassador stephens did not have your personal e-mail address, we established that. that s right. did he have your cell phone number? no, but he had the 24-hour number of the state operations in the state department that can reach me 24-7. yes, ma am. did he have your fax number? he had the fax number of the state department. did he have your home address? no, i don t think any ambassador has ever asked me for that. did he ever stop by your house? no, he did not, congressman. mr. blumenthal had each of those and did each of those things. this man who provided you so much on libya had access in ways that were very different than the access that a very senior diplomat had. joining me now, political editor and white house correspondent. sam, they seem focused on sidney blumenthal for a long p