Second State employee refuses GOP questions on Clinton server
A State Department staffer who oversaw security and technology issues for Hillary Clinton is refusing to answer Senate investigators’ questions about the former secretary of state’s use of a private email server — marking the second time an ex-State employee has declined to talk to lawmakers.
John Bentel, a now-retired State employee who managed IT security issues for the top echelon at the department, declined to be interviewed by GOP staff on the Senate Judiciary and Homeland Security committees, according to a letter obtained by POLITICO.
“We are troubled by your refusal to engage with the committees even after repeated overtures of accommodation,” the letter to Bentel and his lawyer reads. “We need to speak with you. … We would, of course, prefer that you meet with us in a voluntary and informal manner, but we will consider other options if faced with a continuing lack of cooperation.”
Bentel’s lawyer, Randy Turk of Baker Botts in Washington, did not reply to a request for comment, but the recent letter notes that Bentel told House Benghazi investigators last year he did not recall the server matter, according to the Senate letter. And in email correspondence between the panel and Bentel's laywer, which was reviewed by POLITICO, Turk lamented that Bentel had already talked to the House Benghazi panel “about precisely what the committtees’ letter states is the subject of their investigation.”
“Mr Bentel… is understandably not inclined to go through that process again since he has already been questioned at great length about what he knows and what he recalls about that subject,” Turk wrote to Senate investigators in an email last Thursday. "[I]t seems to me that what is really fair here would be for you and the committees to respect Mr Bentel’s decision not to be interviewed a second time about the same subjects he has already been interviewed about at great length."
As Clinton continues battling with Bernie Sanders for the Democratic presidential nomination, this latest missive from Grassley and Johnson shows that the email scandal isn’t going away. Republican investigations into the server will continue through the spring, if not longer, as the FBI conducts its own investigation into whether classified information was mishandled by Clinton’s setup — a probe that is ongoing but could wrap up as soon as this summer. The campaign did not respond to request for comment for this story.
Bentel is now the second former State staffer to decline an interview request from congressional investigators. Last year, Clinton’s top IT staffer, Bryan Pagliano, who personally maintained her server at State, also refused to answer questions. He asserted his Fifth Amendment right before the House Benghazi Committee last September and rebuffed Judiciary and Homeland requests for interviews for their investigations.
Pagliano, who worked for Clinton on the campaign trail before following her to State, was recently reported to have been granted immunity from the FBI so he can discuss the email issue without fear of prosecution.
Law enforcement is investigating whether Clinton’s unusual setup ever put classified information at risk — or whether anyone unlawfully forwarded classified intelligence to her unsecured account. State has discovered more than 2,000 classified emails that passed through the server, including about two dozen that were “top secret.” Clinton maintains they were not marked classified at the time they were sent.
The Senate committees are also investigating the issue, though with a slightly different focus. While also probing the security of the server, the panels are questioning whether Clinton or her top staff ever intentionally sidestepped record-keeping laws under the Freedom of Information Act. That law requires all emails from public officials that mention work issues to be preserved and available for public request.
The FOIA question is also being litigated through federal courts, where conservative group Judicial Watch just won a major victory after a judge approved the group’s request to question Clinton’s closest staffers about whether they were intentionally hiding correspondence.
According to his LinkedIn profile, Bentel joined State in 1974. He served as director of information resources management in the office of the executive secretariat, which includes the secretary and top staff as well as the deputy secretary and undersecretaries. The office also handles State’s relations with the White House, National Security Council and other agencies.
His position, according to the letter, would have made him responsible for Clinton’s information management and information technology needs, including perhaps her BlackBerry use.
On Dec. 4, 2015, Judiciary and Homeland investigators reached out to Bentel’s lawyer to schedule an interview. But Turk told them Bentel had already been asked about the matter when he sat before the House Benghazi Committee. Turk said Bentel told the committee he had “no memory of knowledge” of the server issue and there was “little point” in telling another committee the same thing, according to the letter.
But both Senate panels say Bentel may have been aware of the sever, noting that their investigators have been told that some of Bentel’s subordinates knew about the home setup: “It appears that you were an integral figure in the operations of the Executive Secretariat and that you would have particular and unique knowledge relevant to the committees’ inquiry. Indeed, Department personal have noted that your subordinates in the Executive Secretariat’s office, who reported directly to you, had knowledge of Secretary Clinton’s private email server, which leads one to conclude that you were likely made aware of the server.”
The panels also want to ask Bentel about how FOIAs were handled in the office of the executive secretariat.
After Turk initially rebuffed the panel’s request last winter, the committee continued to try to convince him that speaking to Bentel was necessary and offered to do a phone interview since he no longer lives in Washington, D.C.
“It is worth noting that the committees’ line of questioning would most certainly be different from the Benghazi Committee, since the respective committees are examining different issues,” they wrote.
Their last communication on Jan. 20, 2016, however, went unanswered until last week, when his lawyer reiterated that he was unwilling to answer questions.
“We have spoken to Mr. Bentel and there has been no change in what we have told you previously on several occasions now, both on the phone and in several emails, in response to your prior requests to interview him,” Turk said in the Thursday email to the committee.
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/03/hillary-clinton-emails-state-department-220689
A friend used this scenario in several stories and another friend warned about this years ago. I worry more about them buying up things here.
Unease over Chinese investors buying farms Down Under
SYDNEY: With Chinese buyers eyeing farm land in Australia and New Zealand, authorities are coming under growing pressure to balance the need for foreign investment against accusations of “selling out.”
Currently up for sale is the S. Kidman and Co. Limited cattle empire — a vast Outback estate which covers 1.3 percent of Australia’s land mass and has an average herd of 185,000 cattle.
Treasurer Scott Morrison blocked its sale to all foreign investors in November, including from China, saying it was contrary to the national interest given part of the holding overlaps with a military testing range.
But Morrison recently approved the sale of Australia’s largest dairy farming business to a Chinese buyer, despite criticism that businessman Lu Xianfeng’s Aus$280 million ($210 million) purchase of Tasmania’s Van Diemen’s Land Company could impact food security.
In a statement headed “Sell Out,” independent Senator Nick Xenophon labelled the decision “wrong, wrong, wrong” saying Morrison failed to give sufficient weight to an alternative Australian bid.
“It’s certainly a very emotive issue,” said Hans Hendrischke from the University of Sydney Business School.
“The anxiety about Chinese ownership is part of a larger anxiety with demographic change, with economic change, it is part of Australia having to cope with the idea... that we are coming much closer to Asia economically,” he said.
Hendrischke, who last year co-authored a KPMG report which found that agribusiness accounted for only 1.0 percent of Chinese direct investment in Australia in 2014, said while the Middle Kingdom was not yet a major foreign investor in Australian farmland, politicians were wary of a public backlash as its stake grows.
It is a similar story in New Zealand, where a KPMG report last year found the US was the biggest buyer of that country’s dairy land, purchasing almost five times as much as China, although Chinese purchases tend to attract more attention.
Such is the concern about valuable assets passing into foreign hands, Australia last year tightened scrutiny on overseas investment in agricultural land — lowering the level at which investments are screened to a cumulative total of Aus$15 million ($11.3 million). Previously only purchases over Aus$252 million were screened.
The government is also creating a foreign ownership register of farming land, after politicians with rural constituencies warned against selling farms to overseas investors, including to top trade partner China.
The National Farmers Federation’s Tony Mahar said such a register would “remove the emotion or the hearsay” by showing exactly how much land was owned by Chinese interests.
“You know, 10 or 20 years ago it was Japanese investment, prior to that it was UK investment, it was Canadian investment... so the country for us is to some extent irrelevant,” Mahar said.
“The issue for us is making sure that we continue to attract investment.”
In New Zealand, the world’s largest dairy exporter, critics say the government has shown an inconsistent approach to Chinese ownership of farmland, bowing to populist pressure from political opponents.
China is the biggest foreign investor in the South Pacific country’s dairy industry, which includes milk processing, according to the New Zealand-China Council.
In 2012, Prime Minister John Key strongly defended the right of China’s Shanghai Pengxin to buy the 16-property, 8,000-hectare Crafar farms group in a deal reportedly worth NZ$210 million ($142 million).
While opposition parties labelled it a “land grab” and “economic betrayal,” Key said Chinese investors deserved the same treatment as those from elsewhere.
Yet Key’s government last September blocked Shanghai Pengxin’s NZ$88 million ($59 million) bid to buy another farm, the 13,800-hectare Lochinver Station, despite the Overseas Investment Office recommending it go ahead.
Australia’s Agricultural Minister Barnaby Joyce has acknowledged while his preference was for domestic ownership, foreign bids had to be considered.
Last month Joyce told local media that “people would be screaming at me” if he let all bids through, but if he blocked them “they’d rightly say I was parochial and xenophobic.”
“I think we’re trying to find a happy medium.”
http://www.arabnews.com/economy/news/894651
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