A new batch of e-mails released by the House Select Committee on Benghazi reveals that Cody Shearer — a man investigated by the State Department in the 1990s for falsely representing himself as an agent of the U.S. government while taking cash from a genocidal warlord — wrote at least one crucial intelligence memo on Libya that was sent directly to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
On March 6, 2011, longtime Clinton consigliere Sidney Blumenthal forwarded Clinton a memo written by Shearer on Mahmoud Jibril, then a relatively unknown figure in the Libyan opposition against Gaddafi. In it, Shearer urges the U.S. government to make immediate contact with the Libyan politician. Clinton met directly with Jibril within days of receiving the memo. He was named head of the interim Libyan government soon after.