WASHINGTON -- A month after the September 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, House Republicans grilled a top State Department official for hours about security lapses at the outpost.
Later that day, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton tapped out an email to a close adviser: "Did we survive the day?" she wrote.
"Survive, yes," the adviser emailed back, adding that he would continue to gauge reaction the next morning.
The roughly 300 emails from Clinton's private account that were turned over last month to a House committee investigating the attack showed the secretary and her aides closely monitored the fallout from the tragedy.
They provided no evidence that Clinton, as the most incendiary Republican attacks suggested, issued a "stand down" order to halt U.S. forces responding to the violence in Benghazi, or took part in a broad cover-up of the administration's response, according to senior American officials.
But they did show that Clinton's top aides at times corresponded with her about State Department matters from their personal email accounts, raising questions about her recent assertions that she made it her practice to email aides at their government addresses so the messages would be preserved, in compliance with federal record-keeping regulations.
The emails have not been made public. But four senior government officials described some of the key messages, on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to jeopardize their access to sensitive information.
Spokesmen for both Clinton and the House committee declined to answer questions about the emails.
Clinton exclusively used a private email account that was housed on a server at her home in Chappaqua, N.Y., while she was secretary of state, which kept many of the messages secret.
The emails showed Clinton and her inner circle, as the administration's view of what happened in Benghazi changed, and shed some light on a pivotal moment in the attack's aftermath involving Susan Rice, then the ambassador to the United Nations.
On. Sept. 16, five days after the attack, Rice appeared on several Sunday news programs, including ABC's This Week. Some conservatives suggested Rice took on the role of public spokesman in those first few days after the attacks so that Clinton could duck the controversy. Rice has said Clinton declined to appear because she was tired after a grueling week.
The emails do not settle that question, the senior officials said.
The day that Rice appeared on the shows, Sullivan, who served as Clinton's deputy chief of staff and is one of her most trusted advisers, emailed Clinton a transcript of Rice's remarks on ABC's This Week. Rice, on the show, described it as a spontaneous violence, triggered by an anti-Muslim video.
"She did make clear our view that this started spontaneously then evolved," Sullivan wrote to Clinton.
But in the days that followed, the administration's view of what occurred grew more complicated. Amid intense criticism from Republicans, administration officials began to call it "a terrorist attack." Rice's initial description of the attack as spontaneous came under scrutiny.
Two weeks after that first email assessing Rice's appearance, Sullivan sent Clinton a very different email. He told Clinton he had reviewed her public remarks since the attack and that she had avoided the language that had landed Rice in trouble.
"You never said 'spontaneous' or characterized their motivations," Sullivan wrote.
The 300 emails are a small fraction of those Clinton handed over to the State Department.
At the time she was secretary of state, federal regulations said agencies that allow employees to use private email addresses, "must ensure that federal records sent or received on such systems are preserved in the appropriate agency record-keeping system."
Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., the chairman of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, said he suspected that Clinton has not turned over all the Benghazi-related emails, and asked her to turn over her server to a neutral party to examine all of her emails to determine if others should be provided to his panel.
Gowdy's committee is also likely to press Clinton on why her advisers occasionally used personal email accounts to communicate with her. At least four of Clinton's closest advisers at the State Department did so, including: her chief of staff, Cheryl Mills; senior adviser, Philippe Reines; personal aide, Huma Abedin; and Sullivan.
Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., the ranking member on the committee, said in a statement that "instead of having emails leaked piecemeal -- and mischaracterized," the committee's chairman, Gowdy, "should release all of them -- as Secretary Clinton has asked -- so the American people can read them for themselves."
A Section on 03/23/2015