A vehicle and the surrounding area are engulfed in flames after it was set on fire inside the U.S. consulate compound in Benghazi late on Sept. 11, 2012. | Getty White House For Christmas, a document dump The Obama administration releases 16 pages of heavily redacted emails connected to Benghazi.

The Obama administration on Christmas Eve released 16 pages of acutely redacted emails related to Benghazi .

Thursday's document dump, put out by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in compliance with a Freedom of Information request, includes correspondence sent from American intelligence officials in 2011 and 2012.


The emails — edited to conceal what is considered to be sensitive information — provide few new details about the lethal September 2012 terrorist attack on the diplomatic mission in Libya or American-born Al Qaeda recruiter Anwar al-Awlaki.

In the first email, only two of 17 lines of text were not blacked out. Another email consists of the text "Attached it the final draft; we need comment/coordination by 1000, Friday (tomorrow) 19 October 2012," followed completely by blacked-out text. Other emails consist of the text of news clippings from Reuters, the Washington Post and other organizations.

In a February 2011 email, officials sent a memo in response to a State Department request regarding a possible revocation of al-Awlaki’s passport.

"The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) concurs with the proposal to revoke the U.S. passport of Anwar Nasser a!-AuJaqi," it reads.

Al-Awlaki, a recruiter for Al Qaeda, was killed in September 2011 in Yemen as a result of a U.S-led drone strike. The following year, news of the State Department having revoked Awlaki’s passport was reported.

Other memos grouped with the Thursday morning release include specific instructions from 2013 on how to implement existing protocol on protecting intelligence, as well as a schedule of a counterintelligence executive from 2015.

This is not the first time the Obama administration has released sensitive material in a holiday time. In May, the State Department released 296 emails regarding emails sent from Democratic presidential front runner Hillary Clinton’s homebrewed server.