Leaked emails offer clues to how Clinton would govern

If elected, her instinct for secrecy, her guardedness when facing critics and political opponents, combined with concern about the cyber-breaches of the Democratic National Committee and her campaign are likely to make Clinton less transparent than some of her predecessors.

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(The Obama administration, which has not publicly affirmed that the Russian government was behind the hacking of Podesta’s emails, last week encouraged Ecuador to cut off WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s access to the internet. Assange, who created the whistle-blowing site in 2006, has been holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London for more than four years to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he faces an arrest warrant on allegations of rape.)

Clinton already had a reputation for strained relations with the news media. The digital evolution in media, and changes in the public’s news consumption habits since she and her husband last occupied the White House, would encourage Clinton and her staff to fortify their information lockdown if she’s elected.

The WikiLeaks emails reveal a team tackling communications with practiced techniques designed to maximize control and to minimize damage. The news angles and information sought by news outlets and individual reporters were circulated internally in real time, according to Podesta’s Gmail inbox. Copies of news articles, reporters’ tweets, blog posts, and television broadcasts were constantly monitored. Clinton’s traveling spokesman, Nick Merrill, emailed daily reports to headquarters about questions posed to Clinton on the campaign trail, her answers, and his enthusiastic assessments about her performances on the stump.

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