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Assange ID’s Most Important Clinton Email

(CN) - Wikileaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange revealed what he thought was the most important email of the more than 45,000 hacked from the email account of John Podesta, the chair of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign.

In the Aug. 17, 2014, correspondence, Hillary Clinton gives advice to John Podesta, who was serving as counselor to U.S. President Barack Obama at the time.

Clinton was about a year removed from her resignation as U.S. secretary of state.

In the email, Clinton discusses several aspects of geopolitical issues, but spends most of the lengthy message focused on the worsening conditions in Syria, where the war was intensifying to the detriment of the country's population while simultaneously emboldening a group of Sunni fighters known as Islamic State.

"With all of its tragic aspects, the advance of ISIL through Iraq gives the U.S. Government an opportunity to change the way it deals with the chaotic security situation in North Africa and the Middle East," Clinton says in the email.

She goes on to advocate using U.S. Special Forces both to confront ISIL forces militarily — while making use of allies, such as the Peshmerga fighters of the Kurdish Regional Government — to counteract ISIL's advances.

In an interview with Australian reporter John Pilger, Assange said the correspondence between Clinton and Podesta "is the most significant email in the whole collection."

Assange devotes particular attention to a statement Clinton makes in the fourth paragraph.

"While this military/para-military operation is moving forward, we need to use our diplomatic and more traditional intelligence assets to bring pressure on the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL and other radical Sunni groups in the region," Clinton writes.

Assange said the email is a stunning admission that support for the radical Sunni group is coming from the governments of Saudi Arabia and Qatar themselves, rather than from a few rogue princes in the kingdom siphoning off oil money and funneling it to ISIS, as has often been portrayed by the U.S. Government and media outlets.

Assange also points out that other emails reveal the Clinton Foundation accepted large donations from both Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Assange says this indicates, to him at least, that the Clintons accepted money from regimes they knew were giving financial backing to one of the most notorious terrorist organizations in the world.

"This notorious jihadist group, called ISIL or ISIS, is created largely with money from people who are giving money to the Clinton Foundation?" Pilger asks Assange during the interview.

"Yes," is the terse reply.

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