Hillary Clinton's State Department convinced CBS's "60 Minutes" to use "planted" questions during a 2011 interview with Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, according to a newly released email from one of Clinton's former aides.
"I just received confirmation from '60 Minutes' that a piece on Julian Assange will air Sunday night," Philip Crowley, the assistant secretary of state for public affairs, wrote to Clinton in 2011. "He will be the only person featured. We had made a number of suggestions for outside experts and former diplomats to interview to 'balance' the piece. 60 Minutes assures me that they raised a number of questions and concerns we planted with them during the course of the interview. We will be prepared to respond to the narrative Assange presents during the program."
A spokesman for "60 Minutes" disputed Crowley's assertion that the State Department "planted" questions for the news organization's interview with Assange, and accused Crowley of trying to get credit from Clinton.
"The idea of a 'plant' is as preposterous as this email writer's attempt to get credit from his boss," Kevin Tedesco told CNNMoney. "We spoke to many sources for this story."
The message was included in the latest batch of emails released by the State Department on Wednesday from Clinton's private email server that she used as secretary of state. A federal judge ordered the State Department to release all of Clinton's work emails as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, notes USA Today.
A Clinton email released by the State Department in July shows that an NBC source leaked potential questions to then-Secretary of State Clinton's staff ahead of her appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press," reported Mediaite.
Another email released this week shows that Clinton's State Department tried to convince The Washington Post not to publish un-redacted diplomatic cables obtained from Assange's Wikileaks, according to the Washington Examiner.
Assange rose to fame in 2010 after publishing classified military and diplomatic files to his website Wikileaks that were leaked by Army Pfc. Bradley Manning, including a video showing an American helicopter shooting and the killing of a Reuters photographer and driver in a July 2007 attack in Iraq. The website continues to publish sensitive leaked data, and Assange has been living in asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden over sex assault allegations.
