internal deliberations. The documents, released sporadically by State in response to a request made more than five years ago, are often a confusing muddle. Redactions obscure most of the State lawyers’ specific concerns. In addition, the State emails have been released separately from the original memos from Bill Clinton’s office, which were sent to his lawyers to be reviewed for potential confidential information. However, it’s clear that the vast majority of Bill Clinton’s proposed speaking engagements sailed through with no resistance from State, while a handful of proposals drew scrutiny over possible funding from foreign governments. Asked about the ethics consultations with Hillary Clinton’s immediate staff, a current State Department official defended the practice. “As a practical matter, the office of Secretary Clinton was included for additional perspective on the Secretary’s schedule and work she personally involved herself in. Their role was to identify concerns that could present even the appearance of a conflict and which may not have been apparent to the ethics officials reviewing each case,” said the official, who commented on condition of anonymity. It does not appear the former president ever spoke to the Beijing Forum, although the records made public by the State Department don’t show a definitive decision one way or another. Bill Clinton did give at least two high-dollar, paid speeches in China while his wife served as secretary: a $750,000 address in Hong Kong paid for by telecom firm Ericsson and a $550,000 speech in Shanghai paid for by the Huatuo CEO Forum. They took place days apart in 2011. The State ethics review process — established under a series of agreements struck prior to Hillary Clinton becoming secretary in 2009 — has come under close scrutiny in recent months as reports emerged that the Clinton Foundation did not always submit foreign-government donors for conflict of interest reviews or disclose them publicly. POLITICO sought records of that process under the Freedom of Information Act more than five years ago, in November 2009. In late 2013, State began releasing some of its files on the ethics reviews after the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch filed a lawsuit. The internal State Department records released this week reveal new details about the process, including: —The level of concern at State about foreign-government funding appears to have varied dramatically by country. Government financial backing seems to have scuttled several proposed speeches by the former president in China and at least one in Turkey. However, events in Canada, Thailand and the United Arab Emirates were green-lighted despite money from government sources. — One such government-funded speech delivered by Bill Clinton appears not to have been reported on his wife’s annual financial disclosure, as required by law. Bill Clinton’s aides sought and received approval for a November 12, 2010 speech in Bangkok paid for by the Thai energy ministry and a state-owned oil-and-gas company there, PTT. Photos of the event show Clinton stood under logos for the Thai ministry and PTT as he delivered a speech titled, “Embracing Our Common Humanity.” PTT’s role in the event is also noted in the company’s annual report. However, the address does not appear on the yearly list Hillary Clinton submitted of paid speeches given by her husband, nor was the fee the former president received ever made public. The speech itself was mentioned in passing in news accounts about something else the former president reportedly did in Bangkok on that trip: film a cameo for Hangover II. (The scene was apparently cut and one actor in the film said Clinton just visited the set and never planned a cameo.) —Until now, agency officials and Clinton aides have been vague about whether any foundation donations ever wound up being cleared under a vetting arrangement set up before Hillary Clinton became secretary, but the records show at least one such foreign-government gift was submitted and approved at State. Part of the current controversy surrounding the foundation was generated in February when the fund acknowledged, in response to a query from the Washington Post, that Clinton aides had not submitted for review a $500,000 gift the Algerian government contributed for earthquake relief in Haiti. But a request for approval did come in for a planned $175,000 donation from a Colombian government agency to a development program run by the Clinton Foundation in coordination with Canadian mining magnate Frank Giustra. Part of the money was intended for a spice-growing cooperative; another chunk was destined for a foundation run by singer Shakira. The initial submission to State prompted Mills to ask Bill Clinton’s office by email: “Can you provide any context for the purpose of the contribution?”

<undocumented immigrants from deportation. Behind the scenes, the strategy turned from defense to offense in late April, when the campaign caught a break and obtained an early copy of the 256-page book. At that point, the campaign began pitching its own stories about “Clinton Cash,” and then finally turned to new media to tell its own version of the story. Campaign operatives leaked single chapters of the book to national media outlets, sources with knowledge of the deals said — a strategy that allowed them to undercut the reporters who, through exclusive agreements with Schweizer, had obtained early copies of the entire tome, and also to attack the content at the same time. Schweizer, in an interview, said he was aware of the strategy. “I knew fairly early on they had access to the book,” he said. “Sure, it helped them. They’re famous for that. I was aware they were leaking selectively chapters, particularly as journalists who had access to the full book had contacted them with questions. They didn’t want to share the complete book, just chapters. For me, the power of the book is in the pattern of the behavior.” Schweizer said he caught on to the strategy when the New York Times investigative team was working on a 4,000-word story about the connection between Clinton donor Frank Giustra and the approval of a sale of a mining company to Russia, which drew from chapters 2 and 3 of his book. Indeed, the Clinton team was particularly concerned that the Times and Post would use his book as a jumping off point for investigations — coverage that would make it harder for them to simply dismiss Schweizer as a tool of the right. Just as the New York Times was preparing to publish its investigation of the Giustra matter, “the Clinton team is sending chapter 3 of the book to Time magazine and other reporters,” Schweizer said. “Who gets just one chapter of the book? They gave them chapter 3 but not chapter 2, which is also on the uranium deal. You’ve got reporters running with stories that didn’t have the full picture. That was the Clinton strategy: to muddy the waters and not have an honest conversation.” The campaign says that Giustra, the Canadian billionaire whose role in the uranium deal is outlined in chapter 3, sold his stock two years before Clinton was appointed as Secretary of State. Schweizer says that’s only part of the story. “The book talks about nine people who are shareholders, not just Giustra,” he said. “They never mentioned the other eight. They’re mentioned in chapter 2, not 3.” The goal of aggressively parceling out parts of the book was to generate headlines that could be discredited before the book hit the shelves and before Schweizer went on the television circuit promoting his work. When Schweizer started making the media rounds on the Sunday shows ahead of the May 5 book release, the Clinton team had managed to get ahead of him to put him on the defensive. “We’ve done investigative work here at ABC News, found no proof of any kind of direct action,” “This Week” host George Stephanopoulos said of the claims about the uranium deal with Russia. Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta and Fallon published their own posts directly to Medium, to point out what they said were errors and omissions. During the weeks that various chapters of the book were making headlines, the campaign began releasing nightly memos to surrogates and supporters with stories and commentators on air who had discredited the book, or raised questions about the reporting. In total, the campaign put out five detailed memos to its network. “In the last two days alone, three new claims by the partisan author of the Clinton Cash book have been discredited by independent news outlets,” read a line in one of the memos. The final push came on the day of the book’s release. The campaign spent over 96 hours building out “The Briefing,” a website that launched on the day of the book’s release, which included an upbeat video featuring Fallon responding to the book and a supercut of Clinton surrogates and talking heads with the general message: “there’s no there there.” In the donor world, the painstaking strategy to deal with the book was noticed. >

<“Clinton Cash” threat – a still-unfolding stream of allegations involving the Clinton Foundation and its donors, but one that seems not to have seriously altered perceptions of Hillary – as proof of the campaign’s ability to manage messaging and counter the inevitable blowback of an 18-month campaign. The campaign systematically raised questions about the objectivity of author Peter Schweizer and, according to sources with knowledge of the deals, strategically leaked details of the book to news outlets to undercut the exclusivity of excerpts given to reporters at The New York Times and Washington Post, who had obtained special deals with Schweizer. Sources close to Clinton described meetings at her personal office in Midtown Manhattan that were so focused that when Fallon’s twins were born April 8 — four days before Clinton officially launched her campaign — he continued to join the conferences by phone from the hospital in Washington, D.C., despite being on leave. The game plan at first was two-pronged: debunk author Peter Schweizer by stressing his ties to Republicans and his close friendship with the Koch brothers, while a second group of research and communications operatives pushed positive messages the campaign would roll out while the book was making headlines. Instead of hunkering down, Clinton would make news herself with a speech on criminal justice — where she called for an end to mass incarcerations — and a newsy speech on immigration, where she vowed to expand on President Obama’s executive actions to include another 5 million undocumented immigrants from deportation. Behind the scenes, the strategy turned from defense to offense in late April, when the campaign caught a break and obtained an early copy of the 256-page book. At that point, the campaign began pitching its own stories about “Clinton Cash,” and then finally turned to new media to tell its own version of the story. Campaign operatives leaked single chapters of the book to national media outlets, sources with knowledge of the deals said — a strategy that allowed them to undercut the reporters who, through exclusive agreements with Schweizer, had obtained early copies of the entire tome, and also to attack the content at the same time.