Democratic Party presidential nominee Hillary Clinton
WASHINGTON – Then-U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton determined not to lift a finger to persuade the United Kingdom to lift its ban on travel by talk-show kingpin and bestselling author Michael Savage in an email to her chief legal counsel Cheryl Mills posted by WikiLeaks.
In addition, in a followup email, Mills explains the kind of ban imposed by the U.K. on Savage could happen in the United States under current law.
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The June 5, 2009, email with a subject line of "Savage holding pattern and next steps," is from Clinton herself from her private email account – [email protected] – to Mills at her official State Department email address – [email protected].
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From the context of two emails on the subject of Savage's ban from the U.K., it appears Joan Donoghue, then deputy legal adviser at the State Department, looked into controversy and reported on it to Mills, Jacob Sullivan, then deputy chief of staff for Clinton and now a foreign policy adviser to her campaign, among others.
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Donoghue's brief report said: "The demarche was delivered Friday in London, to FCO and Home Office officials. The Embassy passed your letter to them, drawing their attention in particular to Mr. Savage's statement that he had never advocated violence and that his statements had never instigated violence. The British officials said that, given Mr. Savage's legal action in the UK, Treasury solicitors would contact his legal representatives directly to provide details of the comments that had given rise to the decision to exclude him."
In response, Clinton emailed her top aides at State: "Joan makes good points. Let's hold on doing anything until we all talk."
In a second email to Clinton on the same day, Clinton's legal counsel Mills wrote: "On Michael Savage: Joan wanted everyone to clearly understand before any further discussion occurred with UK that Savage's exclusion could also have occurred under our legal regime so to the extent we want to suggest to UK that his exclusion on free speech grounds is inappropriate (or any thing of that like) that we should understand we may appear slightly hypocritical given our legal regime and actions."
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In other words, the U.K. ban against Savage could happen in the U.S. on the same grounds, according to the woman who likely will be White House counsel should Clinton be elected.
Savage had this to say to WND in response to the State Department emails: "I have long believed that someone in the Clinton camp worked in cahoots with the socialist Labor Party government to destroy my career. These emails show that Mrs. Clinton herself had the power to appeal to the British government to remove my name from their banned list but refused to do so. Why? As an American citizen I appealed to Hillary Clinton as secretary of state to defend my First Amendment rights. She refused to do so. Why?"
Michael Savage
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Savage travel to the U.K. was banned by the government's top homeland security official in 2009 along with terrorists and neo-Nazi murderers on the pretext that his views might provoke violence.
Then Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said she decided to publicize the list of 16 people banned since October to show the type of behavior Britain will not tolerate, according to U.K. news reports.
Savage's immediate reaction upon hearing the news was typically wry: "Darn! And I was just planning a trip to England for their superior dental work and cuisine. Then it sank in," he told WND, "and I said, ‘She said this is the kind of behavior we won't tolerate? She's linking me with mass murderers who are in prison for killing Jewish children on buses? For my speech? The country where the Magna Carta was created?'"
Smith explained to Britain's GMTV that she believed it was "important that people understand the sorts of values and sorts of standards that we have here, the fact that it's a privilege to come and the sort of things that mean you won't be welcome in this country."
"Coming to this country is a privilege," she said. "If you can't live by the rules that we live by, the standards and the values that we live by, we should exclude you from this country and, what's more, now we will make public those people that we have excluded."
In an interview with the BBC, Smith said Savage, the No. 3-rated radio host in the U.S., is "someone who has fallen into the category of fomenting hatred, of such extreme views and expressing them in such a way that it is actually likely to cause inter-community tension or even violence if that person were allowed into the country."
"It's interesting to me that here I am a talk show host, who does not advocate violence, who advocates patriotic traditional values – borders, language, culture – who is now on a list banned in England," Savage said. "What does that say about the government of England? It says more about them than it says about me."
The U.K. list also included Hamas leader Yunis Al-Astal, former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard Stephen Donald Black, neo-Nazi Erich Gliebe and radical American pastor Fred Phelps, known for his virulent anti-gay protests at funerals. Phelps' daughter Shirley Phelps-Roper also is on the list.
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Others on the list are Jewish nationalist Mike Guzovsky; imprisoned Russian skinhead leaders Artur Ryno and Pavel Skachevsky; and Islamic leaders Wadgy Abd El Hamied Mohamed Ghoneim, Abdullah Qadri Al Ahdal, Safwat Hijazi , Amir Siddique, Abdul Ali Musa, Samir Al Quntar and Nasr Javed.
Said Savage, "How can a nation put me on a list and leave hate preachers in England who say that we're going to kill all of you? We're going to convert all of you to Islam. How is it possible that those hate preachers can't be deported from Britain, but I can be banned from Britain? People who advocate actual murder cannot be deported from Britain.
"How is it that liberalism has gotten so distorted and cowardly?"
When a new "conservative" U.K. government swept into power in 2011, the ban on Savage was reaffirmed.
In 2013, the famed Oxford Union in England Savage to participate in a debate on whether or not fugitive National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden should be called a hero. Savage replied: "While I am most honored to have been invited to speak at the Oxford Union, I am unable to enter the great nation of England."
