New York police say assailants chanted 'ISIS' while beating man

news.yahoo.com

---

(Reuters) - New York City police were investigating on Sunday an assault on a man who was pummeled by suspects shouting "ISIS, ISIS," leaving him with bruises on his head and face, authorities said.

The 43-year-old man was attacked while walking with a nine-year-old girl in the Bronx around 5:30 p.m. on Friday, according to the New York City Police Department.
He was punched several times in the head, knocked down and kicked, police said. The victim, whose name was not given, was treated for injuries at a hospital and released.
He had been wearing a shalwar kameez, a traditional South Asian outfit featuring a long tunic, the New York Times reported.
The attack comes amid increasing anxiety in the United States over the threat posed by Islamic State, also known as ISIS, which has claimed responsibility for militant attacks around the world.
A Muslim couple inspired by the group killed 14 people on Dec. 2 in San Bernardino, California, just weeks after gunmen linked to Islamic State killed 130 people in Paris.
No one was immediately arrested in the New York assault, which is under investigation by the police department's Hate Crime Task Force, the agency said in a statement on Saturday.

(Reporting by Letitia Stein in Tampa, Fla.; Editing by Stephen Powell)

CIA Spokesman Slams ‘13 Hours' as 'Distortion' of Benghazi Events

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A spokesman for the CIA is criticizing the Michael Bay movie “13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi” as a “distortion of the events and people who served in Benghazi that night.”

The spokesman, Ryan Trapani, wasquoted in an exclusive Washington Post story, which also features an interview with the CIA chief in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012, when Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others were killed in a siege of the diplomatic compound and attack on the CIA annex.

“No one will mistake this movie for a documentary,” Tripani told the Post. “It’s a distortion of the events and people who served in Benghazi that night. It’s shameful that, in order to highlight the heroism of some, those responsible for the movie felt the need to denigrate the courage of other Americans who served in harm’s way.”

Tripani did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The CIA base chief, identified only as “Bob,” takes issue with a key point in the movie, when he tells the six contractors to “stand down” before responding to calls for help at the nearby diplomatic compound. The movie shows the contractors waiting for more than 20 minutes before bucking orders and leaving to try to save Stevens and others.

“There was never a stand-down order,” the CIA chief told the Post. “At no time did I ever second-guess that the team would depart.” The CIA chief told the Post that he spent about 20 minutes trying to enlist local security teams.

Congressional investigators also have concluded there was no “stand down” order.

The filmmakers and Mitchell Zuckoff, who along with the security contractors authored the book upon which it is based,have defended the movie and its portrayal of the events. It starts with a message, “This is a true story.”

Zuckoff told Variety on Thursday, “We have never heard anything from the CIA other than, ‘No [the stand-down order] didn’t happen.’ These guys [the security contractors] are putting their lives and their reputations on the line saying, ‘We were forced to wait,and the record shows it.'”

In interviews, the contractors have been adamant that the “stand down” order was issued. Earlier this week, Rep. Trey Gowdy(R-S.C.), chairman of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, said in an interview with the Boston Herald that when it comes to the stand down order, “there are witnesses who said there was one and there are witnesses who said there was not one… So the best I can do is lay out what the witnesses say and then you are going to have to make a determination as to who you believe is more credible.”

Update: Zuckoff issued a statement on Friday evening through Paramount, the distributor of “13 Hours.”

“The movie and book got it right. The CIA spokesman’s comments are predictable but not remotely credible.

“If you read “Bob’s” statements to the Washington Post, he would have us believe that he neither prevented the guys from leaving nor approved or ordered their departure. That’s nonsensical on its face and contradicted by facts and logic:

“– Two of our named sources, John Tiegen and Kris Paronto, heard Bob say those words, stand down, which they shared with Jack and D.B., who already understood that they were being held back. Our two key sources are on the record, with their names, while Bob remains shielded by anonymity.

“– Neither Bob nor the CIA disputes that a delay occurred and that the guys ultimately moved out without his authorization. That, logically, adds up to a simple conclusion: he held them back and then they left without his approval.

“– All evidence — and the CIA’s past statements — points to the conclusion (included in the movie and the book) that the delay was caused by a sincere but ultimately misguided attempt to coordinate with 17 Feb militiamen. But from the guys’ perspective, based on a collective century of military experience, that was a fool’s errand because 17 Feb had failed to help Tyrone during the airport standoff; 17 Feb was on a work stoppage for higher pay during the ambassador’s visit; and 17 Feb generally couldn’t be counted on in a live-fire situation with an American ambassador’s life at stake.

“– Bob’s statements, and the CIA’s claims, need to be seen through the lens of hindsight. It must be terrible for him to live with the fact that he delayed the departure, knowing that the deaths of Chris Stevens and Sean Smith were caused by smoke inhalation, which by definition is a function of time.

“– Through the CIA, Bob refused my requests to hear his side of the story during the writing of the book. He is only now coming forward because he doesn’t like his depiction.

“– Bob might have had a different sense of urgency from the guys in part because he did not accompany them to the Diplomatic Compound to assess the weak security situation prior to the ambassador’s visit (as depicted in the movie and the book).

“– Logic suggests that Bob’s career as an intelligence officer did not give him the same tactical experience or knowledge that the guys possessed, as depicted in the movie and the book.”

COMMENTS

'13 Hours' Book Author Defends 'STAND DOWN' Scene

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By JOCELYN NOVECK, AP National Writer

"Stand down," says the actor playing the CIA station chief in Michael Bay's new film, "13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi." He's speaking to the security team that wants to go help Americans under siege less than a mile away in a U.S. diplomatic compound under fierce attack. His order keeps the team from leaving for a crucial 20 minutes, before they decide to ignore him and go anyway.

It's the pivotal — and most controversial — scene in the new film, a movie that Bay insists steers clear of politics, but which is bound to spark much political discussion nonetheless. On Friday — the movie's opening day — the Washington Post quoted the now-retired CIA station chief, identified only as Bob, as strongly denying he ever issued such an order or anything like it.

"There never was a stand-down order," the base chief was quoted by the Post as saying. "At no time did I ever second-guess that the team would depart."

The author of the book upon which the film is based, Mitchell Zuckoff, stood by his depiction of the scene on Friday, saying in a telephone interview with The Associated Press that he'd based it on several firsthand accounts. Zuckoff collaborated on his book, "13 Hours," with some of the surviving security contractors.

"It's not credible what he's claiming," Zuckoff said of the station chief, whom he said he had tried to interview when writing the book, but his request was denied.

Four Americans died in the attacks, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens.

In November 2014, a two-year investigation by the Republican-controlled House Intelligence Committee found that the CIA and military acted properly in responding to the 2012 attack on the compound. Among other findings, it determined that there was no delay in sending a CIA rescue team, and no missed opportunity for a military rescue.

In Washington, CIA spokesman Ryan Trapani referred to those findings and others as making it clear that the scene in the film is inaccurate. "If one is looking for facts on Benghazi, those reviews contain them," he said.

"No one will mistake this movie for a documentary," Trapani added. "It's a distortion of the events and people who served in Benghazi that night. It's shameful that, in order to highlight the heroism of some, those responsible for the movie felt the need to denigrate the courage of other Americans who served in harm's way."

Trapani called what happened in Benghazi "an amazing tale of heroism, courage under fire, leadership and camaraderie by the CIA security team, other CIA officers, State Department personnel, and those who came on the evacuation mission from Tripoli."

In the Post report, the station chief, Bob, also challenged the movie's depiction of him as treating the security contractors —members of the so-called Global Response Staff — dismissively and derisively as "hired help," in the words of the film script.

"These guys were heroes," he was quoted as saying by the Post.

Zuckoff, who teaches journalism at Boston University, said he wasn't surprised that the movie has sparked political discussion.

"It would be naive to think that some won't view it through a political lens," he said. "But it's not what we set out to do in the book or movie."

Bay, the director, has stressed that he sees the movie as non-political, because it focuses on what he calls "a great human story, that got buried. And that's the story I'm telling: the guys who were on the ground. The men and women that were stuck in the CIA annex, and how they fought for 13 hours to get out of there alive."

Speaking in an interview last week in Miami promoting the movie, Bay also said that the filmmakers took great pains to present the facts accurately.

"We worked very hard to get the facts right from the research of the book that Mitch did to the amazing access I have from working 20 years with the military, from the boots on the ground, the people who were in country to the CIA, at a high-level meeting to get just the facts right, the recently released emails. We just had to get it right."

___

Associated Press writer Joshua Replogle in Miami contributed to this report.

Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

COMMENTS

Many 'lost' voters say they have found their candidate in Trump

www.yahoo.com

By James Oliphant, Chris Kahn and Megan Cassella

WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Ted Wade hasn’t cared about politics enough to cast a vote in a U.S. presidential election for almost a quarter of a century, back when he supported Ross Perot’s independent candidacy in 1992.

But Republican Donald Trump's 2016 White House bid has motivated Wade to get involved and he plans to support the real estate mogul in Nevada’s nominating caucus next month. Trump is a "non-politician" who can fix the "chaos" in Washington, he says.

About one in 10 Americans who plan to cast a vote this election will do so for the first time in years, if ever, and Trump holds a decided edge with them, according to polling by Reuters/Ipsos. (http://tmsnrt.rs/1SgeLvi)

These voters offer Trump a pool of voters who could be decisive either in the Republican primaries or a general election. They could be crucial for Trump in early-voting states such as Iowa and South Carolina, where his nearest rival, Senator Ted Cruz, is putting pressure on Trump and enjoys a strong base of support with more traditionally conservative voters.

In Reuters/Ipsos polling from June to December 2015, 27.3 percent of these “new” voters said they would vote for Trump, higher than his poll numbers among independents and Republicans who regularly vote.

By way of comparison, Cruz captures just 3.4 percent of these voters. And Senator Marco Rubio of Florida snags only 4 percent.

“I’m tired of the chaos between Democrats and Republicans and want to give somebody a try who I think can make a difference,” said Wade of Trump.

The 51-year-old has already switched his affiliation from Democrat to Republican and even attended a Trump campaign event in Las Vegas. He has told his three older children to get involved in the elections, although he did not say whether he wanted them to vote for Trump.

Trump, the Republican front-runner, has made targeting “lost” voters such as Wade a focus of his campaign. His anti-immigrant rhetoric and protectionist trade proposals have helped him to fashion a message tailored to reach Americans alienated by the endless enmity between the political parties and who, because of declining economic prospects, may feel like neither party has done much for them.

Trump’s strategy is a gamble, given the lack of reliability of many of the voters with whom he is most popular.

In interviews, some of those lost voters insist they will show up, saying they are drawn to Trump’s outsider status and his willingness to upend the political system.

PAGING A PIRANHA

Tucson, Arizona, resident Renay Cunningham, 56, said she had never paid much attention to politics in the past. She plans to cast her first ever vote for Trump after hearing his proposed policies to curb illegal immigration, which include building a giant wall on the southern border and making Mexico pay for it.

“We need a piranha in there, and he’s definitely a piranha,” she said.

Trump and his operatives are confident they can do what few of his rivals for the Republican nomination have shown they can do — expand the party’s potential voter pool.

But while Democrat Barack Obama did that eight years ago by largely registering new voters, including record levels of minorities, both male and female, in urban centers, Trump’s campaign has instead largely sought out the disaffected, who tend to be overwhelmingly older, white, and less educated than the broader electorate.

“My whole campaign has been focused on expanding the number of people who want to, and will, participate in this election cycle,” Trump wrote in a recent op-ed in USA Today.

When analyzing “lost” or “new” voters, Reuters compiled poll results from people who haven’t voted in the previous two presidential campaigns and midterm congressional elections.

The results focused only on those who said they were nearly certain to vote in the November election. It included responses from 3,440 “new” Republican and independent voters – a sample that has a credibility interval of 2 percentage points.

Jan Leighley, an expert on turnout at American University, said it’s too soon to compare Trump’s “new” voters with the disenfranchised voters, especially minorities, who in 2008 turned out in record numbers to elect the first black president.

Those voters didn’t find their way to the polls simply because they were inspired to make history, Leighley said. “He also had a kick-ass mobilization structure."

“Obama’s campaign went door-to-door. They canvassed whole neighborhoods. “I don’t know if he (Trump) has the campaign infrastructure to make sure that the folks who are riled up are walked to the polls on Election Day,” she said.

CHANGING THE RULES

Trump’s campaign insists he does have the infrastructure, but won’t provide specifics on how it intends to turn casual supporters into engaged voters. The campaign says it does follow up with the thousands of attendees who jam arenas for Trump’s rallies.

That’s one significant advantage the reality star has over the other candidates in the Republican field, as the challenge in reaching voters who have fallen out of the political process often lies in simply locating them.

“We’ve identified a lot of people in early primary states who have not participated in the process before,” campaign manager Corey Lewandowski told Reuters.

Lewandowski resists the notion that Trump needs to turn out “new” or reluctant voters to win states such as Iowa.

Even if the Trump campaign isn’t necessarily counting on them, it may be reassuring that his supporters among “new” voters who responded to the Reuters/Ipsos survey appear motivated to cast a vote for him. At least for the time being.

Ronald Thomas, a 49-year-old truck driver and Navy veteran in North Carolina, said he, too, has never voted in a presidential contest. His girlfriend would push him to vote but he would always say "Yeah, but the right one ain’t come along yet,’” Thomas said.

Trump is that man. His willingness to take on the government has set him apart as someone who would "actually look out for the people," said Thomas. Now he wants to know how to register so that he can vote for the billionaire.

And there’s Vince DiSylvester, a retired maintenance worker in Missouri, who, at 73, said has never cast a ballot for president. But Trump has inspired him to rethink that.

"He's a businessman, he knows business, he knows how to get things done," he said. "And he tells it like it is. If you don't like it - well, too bad."

(Editing by Ross Colvin)

COMMENTS

Top Google search: 'Will Hillary Clinton get prosecuted?'

www.politico.com

It's likely not about the themes her campaign hopes to highlight. | Getty

Two of the top searched questions on Google for Hillary Clinton are likely not about the themes her campaign hopes to highlight.

"Will Hillary Clinton get prosecuted?" is most searched question on Google ahead of the Democratic debate on Sunday night. "Will Hillary Clinton win the nomination?" is second and "What did Hillary Clinton do that is illegal?" is the third.

For Sanders, the top question is much more positive. "Why is Bernie Sanders so popular?" followed by "Can Bernie Sanders win?" and "How old is Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders?"

For Martin O'Malley, the top questions are: "Why is Martin O'Malley running for President?", "Martin O'Malley was Governor of which state?" and "Is Martin O'Malley still running for President?"

Throughout the event, as Sanders rolled out a health-care plan, searches for the Vermont senator dominated over Clinton and O'Malley, peaking in the 30 minutes before the debate began.

Hadas Gold is a reporter at Politico.

COMMENTS

Iran frees Post correspondent Jason Rezaian, 3 others, officials say

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VIENNA — Iran released Washington Post correspondent Jason Rezaian and three other detained Iranian Americans on Saturday in exchange for seven people imprisoned or charged in the United States, U.S. and Iranian officials said, a swap linked to the imminent implementation of a landmark nuclear deal between Tehran and six world powers.

Iranian officials said Rezaian, 39, was freed from Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison after 18 months of captivity and was to be promptly flown out of the country with the three other released detainees..

U.S. officials subsquently confirmed the deal but were awaiting confirmation that a Swiss plane carrying the four has left Tehran.

Iran’s judiciary announced the release in Tehran as part of an exchange, according to Iranian news media.

A Dec. 27, 2011 file photo of a video frame grab image made from the Iranian broadcaster IRIB TV, shows U.S. citizen Amir Mirzaei Hekmati, accused by Iran of spying for the CIA, in Tehran's revolutionary court, in Iran. (AP)

In return, the United States was scheduled to release seven people charged with violating sanctions against Iran, the Iranians said.

The Associated Press quoted a U.S. official as confirming that seven Iranians were being freed as part of the deal. The news agency said Iran is also releasing a fifth American, a student detained in Tehran some months ago, separately from the exchange.

A senior administration official, speaking in Vienna, confirmed the exchange but said that “our citizens have not yet been flown out of Iran, and we do not want to do anything that would complicate it.”

The official said that the “Iranians wanted a goodwill gesture” as part of the release, and that led to the exchange. The list the Iranians submitted to U.S. authorities was “whittled down” to exclude any crimes related to violence or terrorism,” said the official, one of several who spoke on condition of anonymity under administration ground rules..

Another official said that the exchange was a “one-time arrangement because it was an opportunity to bring Americans home,” and should not be considered something that would “encourage this behavior in the future” by Iran.

The officials did not tie the release directly to the nuclear talks and said they had not wanted the detained Americans to be “used as leverage” in the negotiations. But, they said, completion of the nuclear deal last July greatly accelerated talks about the prisoners.

Naghmeh Abedini, holds a necklace with a photograph of her husband, Saeed Abedini, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, June 2, 2015, during a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing with four people whose family members are being held in Iran. (Jacquelyn Martin/AP)

Rep. Jared Huffman (R-Calif.), who represents the district where the Rezaian family lives, said he was told by the White House that the Americans would be aboard a Swiss Air plane that would take them briefly to Switzerland and that they would not return home until they have “medical checkups,” most likely at a U.S. military medical facility in Germany.

“We’re all very excited that hopefully within a matter of days we’ll be able to welcome them back to the United States,” Huffman said.

In a statement in Tehran, Prosecutor Abbas Jaafari said that “based on an approval of the Supreme National Security Council and the general interests of the Islamic Republic, four Iranian prisoners with dual nationality were freed today within the framework of a prisoner swap deal,” the semiofficial Fars News Agency reported.

The state-run Islamic Republic News Agency, quoting Jaafari, said the agreement also includes a provision under which the United States will no longer pursue the extradition of 14 Iranians alleged to have been involved in trafficking arms to Iran.

News of the reported exchange came as world leaders converged Saturday in Vienna in anticipation of the end of international sanctions against Iran in return for significantly curtailing its nuclear program.

The nuclear agreement will take effect when the International Atomic Energy Agency certifies that Iran has met its commitments under the deal it signed last July with six global powers, including the United States.

Secretary of State John F. Kerry flew from London to Vienna in the early afternoon local time. He went immediately into a meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif at the Coburg Palace Hotel, the scene of months-long final negotiations last summer that led to the deal between Iran and the world powers.

Those reportedly being freed Saturday included Saeed Abedini, 35, of Boise, Idaho; Amir Hekmati, 32, of Flint, Mich.; and Nosratollah Khosavi-Roodsari, Iranian officials said. Fars News Agency named the fourth person as Nosratollah Khosrawi.

Abedini is a Christian pastor who had been imprisoned since July 2012 for organizing home churches. Hekmati is a former Marine who spent more than four years in prison on spying charges following his arrest in August 2011 during a visit to see his grandmother. The detention of Khosavi-Roodsari had not been previously publicized.

Not included in the deal was Siamak Namazi, a Dubai-based oil company executive who had promoted closer U.S.-Iranian ties, Iranian officials said. He was arrested in October while visiting a friend in Tehran. In addition, the fate of former FBI agent Robert Levinson, who disappeared in March 2007 during a visit to Iran’s Kish Island, remains unknown.

Namazi remains incarcerated because “his charges are financial, and not political,” Fars said.

Asked about Namazi and Levinson, U.S. officials in Vienna said that talks were continuing on their fate.

The news agency named seven Iranians it said were being exchanged by the United States in the deal: Nader Modanlou, Bahram Mechanic, Khosrow Afqahi, Arash Ghahreman, Touraj Faridi, Golestaneh and Ali Sabounchi.

Joel Androphy, a lawyer for three of the Iranians to be freed by U.S. authorities, said the Iranian Embassy told him that his three clients, who have been charged with sanctions violations but have not yet gone to trial, have been issued a pardon by President Obama. The administration had no immediate comment.

Kris Coratti, vice president of communications and spokeswoman for The Post, said that “while we are hopeful, we have not received any official word of Jason’s release.”

The journalist’s ordeal damaged his health, drew protests from media and human rights groups and hampered efforts to improve relations between Washington and Tehran. It also exposed fault lines and infighting in Iran’s opaque political system, where Rezaian and other detained Americans appeared to become pawns in a larger internal struggle between hard-liners and reformists seeking to improve ties with the West.

Kerry frequently raised the plight of Rezaian and other imprisoned U.S. citizens during last year’s nuclear negotiations, but their release was not part of the resulting agreement between Iran and the six world powers: the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany.

Rezaian was tried last year behind closed doors on vague charges of espionage and other alleged offenses and was sentenced to an unspecified prison term.

The Americans’ release came as the International Atomic Energy Agency prepared to certify Iran’s compliance with the nuclear deal, triggering steps to lift U.N. sanctions against the country and return an estimated $50 billion in frozen Iranian funds. (Tens of billions more in frozen funds are to be used to pay Iranian debts.)

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has hailed the nuclear accord’s “Implementation Day” and its promise of sanctions relief as heralding a “year of economic prosperity” for Iran and fulfillment of his campaign promises when he was elected in 2013.

Rezaian’s 2014 arrest and his subsequent trial and conviction in Iran’s secretive Revolutionary Court system — on charges that were never publicly disclosed or substantiated — appeared to reflect a power play by hard-liners fiercely loyal to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, against more moderate reformist elements under Rouhani. The hard-liners control Iran’s security forces, intelligence apparatus, judiciary and most other levers of power, while Rouhani — though answerable to Khamenei — has been given relatively free rein to manage Iran’s foreign affairs and improve its economy.

Although major differences between Tehran and Washington persist, tensions eased somewhat after the nuclear deal was reached in July. It imposed restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program, aimed at forestalling any attempt to build nuclear weapons, in return for the lifting of international economic sanctions on Iran and the release of frozen Iranian funds from banks worldwide, mostly in Asia.

Iran in recent weeks took significant steps to meet its obligations under the deal in anticipation of securing sanctions relief and regaining access to its impounded cash. Such tangible benefits from the nuclear accord, which was opposed by hard-liners, could help moderates in Iran’s legislative elections at the end of February.

Increased U.S.-Iranian cooperation appeared to be on display Wednesday when Iran released 10 U.S. sailors within a day after they were seized by Iranian Revolutionary Guard naval forces in the Persian Gulf. The Americans were on two small riverine boats that strayed into Iranian waters.

Against this backdrop, the signs of rapprochement raised hopes for a resolution in Rezaian’s case.

For the first time, the Revolutionary Court allowed his mother, Mary Rezaian, and his Iranian wife, Yeganeh Salehi, to visit him in Evin Prison for an extended period on Christmas Day. In an email to The Washington Post, Mary Rezaian said the meeting lasted “several hours” and that she was able to bring her son “his first home-cooked meal in months.”

Dec. 3 marked the Post correspondent’s 500th day in captivity — longer than 52 Americans were held during the 1979-81 Iran hostage crisis and by far the lengthiest detention of a Western journalist by Tehran.

Ahead of that milestone, The Post filed a supplementary petition with the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, amplifying a filing in July that accused Iran of flagrant human rights violations during Rezaian’s “unlawful” detention and called for his immediate release.

The additional petition cited the journalist’s “decl

How the State Department Caved to Hillary Clinton’s Lawyer on Classified Emails

www.thedailybeast.com

SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP01.15.16 5:01 AM ETClinton’s private lawyer got his way when he pushed back after being asked to delete all copies of a classified email—a level of deference an expert calls ‘far from the norm.’

The State Department put up virtually no resistance when Hillary Clinton’s private lawyer requested to keep copies of her emails—even though those emails contained classified information, and even though it was unclear whether the attorney was cleared to see such secrets.

Experts on the handling of classified information tell The Daily Beast that the seemingly chummy arrangement between Clinton’s lawyer and her former State Department aides was “quite unusual.”

Newly released documents, obtained by The Daily Beast in coordination with the James Madison Project under the Freedom of Information Act, include legal correspondence and internal State Department communications about Clinton’s emails. Those documents provide new details about how officials tried to accommodate the former secretary of state and presidential candidate.

In May 2015, a senior State Department official informed Clinton’s lawyer, David Kendall, that government reviewers had found at least one classified email among the messages she sent using a private account, which she used exclusively while in office. That email was only part of the “first tranche” of the review, a State Department employee noted at the time, leaving open the possibility that more classified information would be found, which it was.

Patrick F. Kennedy, the undersecretary of state for management, who had worked under Clinton, asked Kendall to delete all electronic copies of the message in his possession. (Copies were sent to the State Department.)

But Kendall resisted, saying he needed a full record of his own of the 55,000 pages of emails Clinton had sent, in order to respond to information requests from a House committee investigating the 2012 attacks on U.S. officials in Benghazi, Libya, and from the inspectors general of the State Department and the intelligence agencies.

“I therefore do not believe it would be prudent to delete” the email from the “master copies” that Kendall’s firm was maintaining, he wrote.

There is no indication that Kennedy, who oversees physical and information security for the State Department, protested the private lawyer’s position or tried further to persuade Kendall to delete the classified email. The message had been forwarded to Clinton by one of her senior aides, Jacob Sullivan, in November 2012 and contained references to the attack in Benghazi two months earlier.

Rather, within a few days, State Department employees were told to develop a system that would let Kendall keep the emails in a State Department-provided safe at his law firm in Washington, D.C., where he and a partner had access to them.

“The arrangement with Kendall was far from the norm,” Steven Aftergood, an expert on classification and security policy at the Federation of American Scientists, told The Daily Beast. “There are a number of attorneys around who handle clients and cases involving classified information. They are almost never allowed to retain classified material in their office, whether they have a safe or not. Sometimes they are not even allowed to review the classified information, even if they are cleared for it, because an agency will say they don’t have a ‘need to know.’ In any event, the deference shown to Mr. Kendall by the State Department was quite unusual.”

As early as May 2015, Kendall had been made aware that at least one email in Clinton’s archives included classified information. But that didn’t become public knowledge for some time, and when the Clinton campaign became aware of it is unclear.

As late as July 1, Clinton campaign spokeswoman Karen Finney was pushing back against the notion, telling MSNBC that “the assumption that there was classified information being communicated on this BlackBerry I think has been shown in these emails to just be simply untrue.”

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Kendall did not respond to requests for comment. Brian Fallon, a Clinton campaign spokesman, noted that Kendall had an obligation to retain the former secretary’s emails in order to respond to various government inquiries. “David Kendall was adhering to a preservation request from the FBI, State Department inspector general, and the House Select Committee on Benghazi,” Fallon told The Daily Beast.

State Department spokesperson John Kirby defended the government’s actions. “The State Department takes the protection of sensitive information seriously,” Kirby told The Daily Beast, noting that Kendal had told the department that her emails were still subject to preservation requests. “Accordingly, the department provided Secretary Clinton’s lawyers with instructions on physically securing the documents while additional options were under discussion.”

But a spokesperson for the committee investigating the Benghazi attacks was unpersuaded that the arrangement was appropriate.

“Perhaps if Secretary Clinton had turned her server over to an independent, neutral third-party, such as the State Department Inspector General or the Archivist of the Unites States as the Benghazi Committee suggested when it first uncovered her unusual email arrangement, perhaps the damage to our national security would be less than it is now,” Jamal Ware, a spokesperson for the committee, told The Daily Beast.

The FBI, not the Benghazi committee, is examining the classification issues related to Clinton’s personal email account.

The arrangement with Kendall has been previously reported. But the documents reveal new details about what was happening inside the State Department as officials moved ahead with the unorthodox setup.

At one point, a State Department lawyer questioned whether Kendall or one of his associates, Katherine Turner, was qualified to receive and maintain classified information.

“Do any of the lawyers have TS [top secret] clearances,” Sarah Prosser, a legal adviser at State, asked colleagues in an email in August 2015, after more classified material had been found in Clinton’s emails.

It’s not clear from the emails, portions of which are heavily redacted, what the answer was, but Kendall later said he and Turner did have a top secret-level clearance, given to him previously by the State Department as part of his work representing Clinton before the Benghazi committee. There’s no indication of what legal review State undertook to verify that or determine whether the arrangement was acceptable.

Top secret clearances don’t necessarily entitle someone to all classified information. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) later questioned whether there may have been information in the emails for which Kendall and Turner didn’t have the appropriate clearances, including so-called compartmented information that is derived from some of the most highly classified intelligence-collecting systems in the U.S. government.

The internal State Department correspondence also shows that security officials intended to install a safe and records-keeping system that was suitable only up to the secret level, a lower designation than top secret.

Kendall has long argued, particularly in correspondence with lawmakers, that the emails in his possession were not originally classified and were only deemed so after they were reviewed by government auditors.

One internal email shows that the State Department shared that assessment. “In the first tranche of emails there was one that was subsequently classified,” an executive assistant at State told Gregory Starr, the assistant secretary for diplomatic security, in an email recounting the exchanges between Kennedy and Kendall.

Starr was asked to appoint someone from State’s diplomatic security bureau to go to Kendall’s law firm, Williams & Connolly, “to do a thorough security review to include physical security of area/safe in which document/electronic versions are being kept, who has access to the area/safe, do those individuals have appropriate clearances…”

It’s not clear from the documents what reviews took place.

The question of whether Kendall should be allowed to keep classified email received new scrutiny in July 2015, after investigators found additional Clinton emails that they thought contained classified information.

At the time, Grassley said that at least two emails contained “top secret, sensitive compartmented information.” Investigators found that Clinton’s emails contained information from at least five intelligence agencies.

Kendall gave the thumb drive to the Justice Department on Aug. 6 and gave copies to the FBI.

The internal State Department emails show employees reacting to news that the FBI had taken possession of the thumb drive as well as a server in Clinton’s home in Chappaqua, New York, and that some of the emails were said to contain classified information. On Aug. 11, a State press officer sent around clips of news articles, noting that “this is breaking widely” and providing a brief summary. The nearly 20 recipients included press staff, a senior attorney, and Kennedy.

Prosser, the State Department attorney who’d asked whether Kendall and Turner had proper security clearances, forwarded the email to other attorneys and department security personnel, including some of those she’d been corresponding with about the clearance question.

While State Department officials initially may have felt that non-government lawyers were qualified to maintain classified emails at their office, they changed their tune as investigators began to discover more top secret information among Clinton’s communications.

In late July, as the FBI was preparing to take possession of the thumb drive, Kennedy wrote to lawyers for three of Clinton’s top aides—Sullivan, Philippe Reines, and Huma Abedin—asking them to turn over “all copies of potential federal records” in their clients’ possession.

Kennedy acknowled