to iowa, she planned to talk about reviving small businesses today. how are you? reporter: but criticism for not taking questions followed her. so she relented and even flashed a smile as she defended her relationship with some controversial clinton allies. i have many many old friends. and i always think that it s important when you get into politics to have friends you had before you were in politics and to understand what s on their minds. reporter: the particular friend in question is sidney bloomenthal, who sent her private e-mails about libya, who she then passed on throughout the government. she didn t say today whether she was aware he had a business interest in the country. he sent me unsolicited e-mails, which i passed on. i m going to keep talking to my old friends, whoever they are. reporter: on the iraq war an issue tripping up republicans, she made her regret clear. i know that there have been a lot of questions about iraq posed to candidates over the last w
it s always good to get information from people outside the bubble pass it on and she made the point it was unsolicited unsolicited, which is also important. but, again, embarrassing at the very least. but, nia-malika he s not a lobbyist but, you know, it s kind of as if some lobbyists had an inside track to the person who was going to be president of the united states and was sending them e-mails saying oh, this is happening in libya, and she s passing it on to the diplomats, who it seems like are discounting a lot of the stuff that he s saying. a lot of it just apparently seems to be rumors or just plain wrong. that s right. and on some occasions, she notes that some of the information that she was looking at seemed wrong. but she did often pass it along. and one of the things about the information that he s passing along, it normally wasn t vetted. normally if you re getting access to not only secretary of state, but other officials in the u.s. government a lot of that informati
insider, was advising secretary clinton on libya while he had business interests there. not clear if she knew he had business interests there. he was trying to make money, basically, in libya. he s not a diplomat or an intelligence expert. what do you make of this? well at the very least, anderson it s embarrassing and i think there are legitimate questions that you can raise about a conflict of interest since he did have business interests there. again, we don t know whether she was aware of that or not. but when you talk to people even inside the clinton campaign as i did today, and the name sidney bloomenthal comes up they re like really? because sidney bloomenthal is controversial, he s a clinton partisan he s been in their orbit for decades. and it s not someone they ever expected to kind of be sending e-mails to the secretary of state, about libya. now, you know she passed it on she said today, look you know you don t want to live inside the bubble.