A State Department speechwriter once went 100 hours without sleeping in order to finish a speech for his boss, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Late Monday evening, the State Department released another batch of emails from Clinton's tenure as secretary of state.
Among them was an exchange from January 2010 ,in which State Department senior adviser Lissa Muscatine urged Clinton to thank speechwriter Dr. Tomicah Tillemann, who she said had spent almost four days without sleep fine-tuning the speech.
"If you have the time or the inclination, it would be really nice if you could send an email to Tomicah, or phone him. He went for almost 100 hours without sleep to get the speech done, under unusually trying circumstances," Muscatine said in an email. "He deserves more recognition for grace under pressure and a job well done."
"I did once before the speech and will do again," Clinton said. "[Thanks] to all."
The speech — one of Clinton's lengthier speeches as secretary — was part of a broader push by the department to both advocate for global Internet freedom and use the Internet to undermine autocratic regimes.
In an email Monday night, Tillemann told Business Insider that his sleepless nights were the result of the complex inter-agency back-and-forth that went into crafting the speech, which Tillemann said received more page views than any other speech Clinton delivered.
"It was the U.S. government's first on human rights in the digital age, and because we were breaking a lot of new ground, there were over 50 bureaus and agencies involved in the final review. From a policy standpoint, it was one of the most complex addresses we attempted during Secretary Clinton's time at State," Tillemann said.
He added: "The hours paid off."
He also said that going without sleep was a regular part of his job at the State Department. But he thought it was hardly notable compared to Huma Abedin, who remains a top aide to her presidential campaign.
"For me, going a hundred hours without sleep warranted an email to the Secretary. For Huma, going 100 hours without sleep was just another week on the job," Tillemann said.
In an exchange on December 21, Clinton said an early draft was "good," but made her "sound like a techie (which is good albeit a stretch)."
Tillemann, now a fellow at the New America Foundation, has long had the reputation of an overachiever and a prodigy.
According to Politico, he is the grandson of former Rep. Tom Lantos (D-California), the only Holocaust survivor to ever serve in Congress. He accepted to Yale at the age of 14, where he eventually graduated magna cum laude.
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