In a series of candid email exchanges with top Clinton Foundation officials during the hours after the massive 2010 Haiti earthquake, a senior aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton repeatedly gave special attention to those identified by the abbreviations “FOB” (friends of Bill Clinton) or “WJC VIPs” (William Jefferson Clinton VIPs).

“Need you to flag when people are friends of WJC,” wrote Caitlin Klevorick, then a senior State Department official who was juggling incoming offers of assistance being funneled to the State Department by the Clinton Foundation. “Most I can probably ID but not all.”









“Is this a FOB!” Klevorick writes later, when a Clinton Foundation aide forwards a woman’s offer of medical supplies. “If not, she should go to cidi.org,” she adds, directing the person deemed not to be a Clinton friend to a general government website.





Klevorick and Amitabh Desai, the director of foreign policy for the Clinton Foundation, exchanged dozens of emails, which were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the Republican National Committee and then shared with ABC News. ABC News independently authenticated the emails.



In Haiti, a Factory Where Big Money, State Department and the Clintons Meet



Under Hillary Clinton, US Officials Asked Haitians, Do You Like Bill?



The new emails have surfaced as the Clinton Foundation has once again mobilized a response to the latest humanitarian crisis in Haiti — the death and destruction following Hurricane Matthew. That effort is part of an ongoing commitment by the Clintons to help the Haitian people dating back nearly a decade.



Fears of Famine in Haiti Following Devastating Hurricane



However noble the motives of the officials working to get supplies into Haiti after the 2010 earthquake, numerous messages show a senior aide to then–Secretary of State Hillary Clinton coordinating with a Clinton Foundation official to identify FOBs. The Clintons have said repeatedly that the State Department never gave favorable treatment to foundation supporters in Haiti or anywhere else.

“Nothing was ever done for anybody because they were contributors to the foundation,” Bill Clinton told CBS News’ Charlie Rose in September. “Nothing.”

The correspondence offers a glimpse into the first stages of a $10 billion Haiti recovery effort. The emails appear to show a State Department process that at times prioritized — and, some argue, benefited — people with close ties to the Clintons.

“I think when you look at both the State Department and the Clinton Foundation in Haiti, that line was pretty faint between the two,” said Jake Johnston, a Haiti analyst for the nonpartisan Center for Economic and Policy Research. “You had a lot of coordination and connection between the two, obviously. And I think that raises significant questions about how they were both operating.”







Klevorick told ABC News she served as a point of contact for numerous organizations seeking to help. She said she made notations about Bill Clinton to help determine whether they had a history in Haiti or with disaster relief.

“Everyone’s priority was to get the necessary resources to the right places as soon as possible to save lives,” Klevorick said.

State Department spokesman John Kirby told ABC News the agency served as “an important coordinating hub” for U.S. and international relief efforts. The emails, he said, “show State Department employees working across agencies and organizations, including President Clinton’s aides, to identify potential resources, solve problems and achieve the department and the U.N.’s shared goal of helping Haiti.”

Bruce Lindsey, the chairman of the board of the Clinton Foundation, told ABC News in a written statement that “no special treatment was expected or given.”

“This was a time of dire need, and we mobilized our network and wanted to make sure that any help offered was put to good use,” Lindsey said. “Many had been involved in disaster response before, in New Orleans after Katrina or after the tsunami, and again sought to help.”



Clinton Foundation Statement to ABC News



Neither Bill Clinton nor Hillary Clinton was directly looped into the email conversations.

The correspondence paints a picture of the chaotic first days after the earthquake leveled much of the Haitian capital and claimed an estimated 200,000 lives. One series of messages chronicles efforts by billionaire Denis O’Brien, a longtime donor to the Clinton Foundation and the CEO of the Jamaica-based telecom firm Digicel, to fly relief supplies into Port-au-Prince and get employees of his company out.

Story continues