Hillary Aide to Reporter: Eff Off

Philippe Reines unloads on Michael Hastings
By Mary Papenfuss,  Newser Staff
Posted Sep 24, 2012 11:30 PM CDT
Updated Sep 25, 2012 12:03 AM CDT
Hillary Aide to Reporter: Eff Off
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was hard at work while her aide Philippe Reines was duking it out with a Buzzfeed reporter.   (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

When you're a top State Department aide and you dump on a Buzzfeed reporter, it might be a good idea not to put it in an email. Philippe Reines, Hillary Clinton's long-time aide and personal spokesman, called reporter Michael Hastings—the writer who got Gen. Stanley McChrystal to spill—an "unmitigated a**hole," and signed off his last missive: "Now that we've gotten that out of our systems, have a good day. And by good day, I mean F*** Off."

The nastiness was triggered by Hastings' increasingly perturbed questions about the State Department's handling of the lethal attack on the US embassy in Benghazi—charging possible "incompetence" or even a "cover up"—and Reines' venting on CNN for using a journal from murdered ambassador Chris Stevens. "Why do you bother to ask questions you've already decided you know the answers to?" responded a testy Reines. "Why don't you give answers that aren't bull for a change?" snapped Hastings. Check out Buzzfeed for the entire exchange. (More Hillary Clinton stories.)

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