Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and then-U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice in 2010. (AP Photo, File)

(CNSNews.com) – A fresh batch of Hillary Clinton’s private email correspondence released by the State Department on Monday night reveals concern in the then-secretary of state’s office over how she and then-ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice had portrayed motives for the terrorist attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi.

A lingering controversy in the Sept. 11, 2012 assault that killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans centers on suspicions that the administration deliberately tried to mislead American voters – during President Obama’s re-election campaign – about the nature of the attack.

On Sept. 16, Rice appeared on all five Sunday talk shows and relayed the message that the attack – according to what she said was the best information available at the time – had been a “spontaneous reaction” to an obscure online video denigrating Mohammed. Only later did the administration publicly concede it was a terrorist attack, with a likely al-Qaeda link.

That same Sunday, Clinton aide Jacob Sullivan sent Clinton transcripts of Rice’s interviews.

Above the transcript from ABC’s “This Week,” he wrote to Clinton, “She wasn't asked about whether we had any intel. But she did make clear our view that this started spontaneously and then evolved. The only troubling sentence relates to the investigation, specifically: ‘And we'll see when the investigation unfolds whether what was – what transpired in Benghazi might have unfolded differently in different circumstances.’ But she got pushed there.”

(Rice told ABC, “[O]ur current best assessment, based on the information that we have at present, is that, in fact, what this began as, it was a spontaneous – not a premeditated – response to what had transpired in Cairo. In Cairo, as you know, a few hours earlier, there was a violent protest that was undertaken in reaction to this very offensive video that was disseminated.)

Above the transcript to Rice’s interview on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Sullivan wrote to Clinton, “Nothing to this one” – suggesting perhaps that the ambassador had said nothing the department should be concerned about.

In the email to Clinton with the NBC’s “Meet the Press” transcript, Sullivan said, simply, “Good.”

Clinton’s reply to that was redacted, and Sullivan’s subsequent reply to that redacted message was, “Will do.”

A week after Rice did the talk show rounds, as controversy deepened over claims of deliberate misleading on the part of the administration, Sullivan sent Clinton a compilation of all the statements she had made in the days following the attacks – 24 pages of statements and comments between Sept. 11 and 21.

At the top, he wrote to her, “Attached is full compilation. You never said spontaneous or characterized the motives. In fact you were careful in your first statement that we were assessing motive and method. The way you treated the video in the Libya context was to say that some sought to *justify* the attack on that basis.”

Nonetheless, the talking points which the White House sent Rice to share with the nation on the Sept. 16 talk shows appeared to be at odds with what Clinton told her daughter on the night of the attack on the consulate.

One of the emails released on Monday – revealed during Clinton’s testimony to the House Select Committee on Benghazi in October – was written to Chelsea Clinton (who used an email alias “Diane Reynolds.”)

“Two of our officers were killed in Benghazi by an Al Queda-like [sic] group,” Clinton wrote Chelsea shortly after 11 PM that night. “The Ambassador, whom I handpicked and a young communications officer on temporary duty w a wife and two young children. Very hard day and I fear more of the same tomorrow."

The State Department released the latest batch of approximately 7,800 pages of emails sent and received on Clinton’s private server in line with a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.

Spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau said the department is working to complete release of the remaining emails by a court-ordered deadline of January 29 next year.

Rice served as ambassador to the U.N. until July 2013 when she assumed the post of Obama’s national security advisor. Clinton, who left the State Department in early 2013, leads the Democratic 2016 race for the White House.

See also:

Senators Demand Answers: Why Did Susan Rice Insist Video Caused Benghazi Attack? (Sept. 28, 2012)