Hillary Clinton with Huma Abedin
© AFP 2016/ MANDEL NGAN
Hillary Clinton's close confidante and former chief of staff Huma Abedin, who has long being accused by independent media of having connections with the Islamist organization Muslim Brotherhood, contributed to the disastrous US policies on the Middle East that fanned the spread of radical Islam, former US diplomat and adviser to Senate Republican leaders Jim Jatras told Sputnik.

"It is safe to say that all of Hillary Clinton's disastrous policies in support of the 'Arab Spring' that just happened to open the floodgates of radical Islam, including the Muslim Brotherhood, were arrived at with Abedin's close collaboration," Jatras said on Wednesday.

Abedin is widely expected to serve as Clinton's chief of staff in the White House if the Democratic presidential nominee wins the election next Tuesday.

Abedin's estranged husband, former US Congressman Anthony Weiner, kept a stash of 650,000 emails — some of which is Clinton related — on his personal laptop that were discovered by FBI agents investigating his sex texts to a 15-year-old girl. "Having been installed in a position of close confidence to then-Secretary Hillary Clinton, Huma was in a position to give the chief architect of the Obama administration's foreign policy advice with little opportunity for anyone to dispute it or even know much about it," Jatras noted.

Jatras also pointed out that Clinton's typing skills were known to be minimal. Therefore, "any emails of length on Clinton's personal email account — the only one she used, shunning the official departmental system — was almost certainly typed by someone else, most likely either Huma or Cheryl Mills," Jatras said. Abedin's position gave her enormous influence and power serving as Clinton's recognized chief deputy during her four years as secretary of state, Jatras observed. "This raises the possibility that on occasion, with Hillary's blessing of course, Abedin in effect authored instructions and formulate policy 'as' the Secretary of State," he suggested.

Jatras also asked why the State Department and the Obama administration were not concerned enough to ever make an issue of Abedin's close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States, where her father was an influential figure and where her mother and Huma herself edited the movement's magazine.

"Huma's relationship with Hillary is extremely close, on a personal as well as professional level. What career bureaucrat at the State Department or anywhere else is going to invite the wrath of someone with Hillary's reputation of manic anger, nastiness and imperiousness?" Jatras remarked. Anyone raising the issue of Huma Abedin's ties and loyalties faced inevitable harsh and unjustified accusations of "Islamophobia," racism and bigotry, Jatras explained. "At least in Huma's case, having close associations with the Muslim Brotherhood didn't result in denial of a security clearance to handle the most highly classified government secrets," he said. In the perceptions of the Obama administration, the Muslim Brotherhood represents a "moderate," even "democratic" Islamic force to be cultivated in opposition to so-called "radicals" like al-Qaeda, Jatras emphasized.