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This story originally appeared on Mother Jones and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

ONE ICY MORNING in February 2012, Hillary Clinton's plane touched down in the Bulgarian capital, Sofia, which was just digging out from a fierce blizzard. Wrapped in a thick coat, the secretary of state descended the stairs to the snow-covered tarmac, where she and her aides piled into a motorcade bound for the presidential palace. That afternoon, they huddled with Bulgarian leaders, including Prime Minister Boyko Borissov, discussing everything from Syria's bloody civil war to their joint search for loose nukes. But the focus of the talks was fracking. The previous year, Bulgaria had signed a five-year, $68 million deal, granting US oil giant Chevron millions of acres in shale gas concessions. Bulgarians were outraged. Shortly before Clinton arrived, tens of thousands of protesters poured into the streets carrying placards that read "Stop fracking with our water" and "Chevron go home." Bulgaria's parliament responded by voting overwhelmingly for a fracking moratorium.

Clinton urged Bulgarian officials to give fracking another chance. According to Borissov, she agreed to help fly in the "best specialists on these new technologies to present the benefits to the Bulgarian people." But resistance only grew. The following month in neighboring Romania, thousands of people gathered to protest another Chevron fracking project, and Romania's parliament began weighing its own shale gas moratorium. Again Clinton intervened, dispatching her special envoy for energy in Eurasia, Richard Morningstar, to push back against the fracking bans. The State Department's lobbying effort culminated in late May 2012, when Morningstar held a series of meetings on fracking with top Bulgarian and Romanian officials. He also touted the technology in an interview on Bulgarian national radio, saying it could lead to a fivefold drop in the price of natural gas. A few weeks later, Romania's parliament voted down its proposed fracking ban and Bulgaria's eased its moratorium.

The episode sheds light on a crucial but little-known dimension of Clinton's diplomatic legacy. Under her leadership, the State Department worked closely with energy companies to spread fracking around the globepart of a broader push to fight climate change, boost global energy supply, and undercut the power of adversaries such as Russia that use their energy resources as a cudgel. But environmental groups fear that exporting fracking, which has been linked to drinking-water contamination and earthquakes at home, could wreak havoc in countries with scant environmental regulation. And according to interviews, diplomatic cables, and other documents obtained by Mother Jones, American officialssome with deep ties to industryalso helped US firms clinch potentially lucrative shale concessions overseas, raising troubling questions about whose interests the program actually serves.

Hillary Clinton is welcomed to Sofia by Bulgarian Foreign Affairs Minister Nikolay Mladenov, left. US Department of State/flickr

GEOLOGISTS HAVE LONG KNOWN that there were huge quantities of natural gas locked in shale rock. But tapping it wasn't economically viable until the late 1990s, when a Texas wildcatter named George Mitchell hit on a novel extraction method that involved drilling wells sideways from the initial borehole, then blasting them full of water, chemicals, and sand to break up the shalea variation of a technique known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. Besides dislodging a bounty of natural gas, Mitchell's breakthrough ignited an energy revolution. Between 2006 and 2008, domestic gas reserves jumped 35 percent. The United States later vaulted past Russia to become the world's largest natural gas producer. As a result, prices dropped to record lows, and America began to wean itself from coal, along with oil and gas imports, which lessened its dependence on the Middle East. The surging global gas supply also helped shrink Russia's economic clout: Profits for Russia's state-owned gas company, Gazprom, plummeted by more than 60 percent between 2008 and 2009 alone.

Clinton, who was sworn in as secretary of state in early 2009, believed that shale gas could help rewrite global energy politics. "This is a moment of profound change," she later told a crowd at Georgetown University. "Countries that used to depend on others for their energy are now producers. How will this shape world events? Who will benefit, and who will not?The answers to these questions are being written right now, and we intend to play a major role." Clinton tapped a lawyer named David Goldwyn as her special envoy for international energy affairs; his charge was "to elevate energy diplomacy as a key function of US foreign policy."

"Countries that used to depend on others for their energy are now producers," said Clinton. "How will this shape world events? Who will benefit?The answers to these questions are being written right now, and we intend to play a major role."

Goldwyn had a long history of promoting drilling overseasboth as a Department of Energy official under Bill Clinton and as a representative of the oil industry. From 2005 to 2009 he directed the US-Libya Business Association, an organization funded primarily by US oil companiesincluding Chevron, Exxon Mobil, and Marathonclamoring to tap Libya's abundant supply. Goldwyn lobbied Congress for pro-Libyan policies and even battled legislation that would have allowed families of the Lockerbie bombing victims to sue the Libyan government for its alleged role in the attack.

According to diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks, one of Goldwyn's first acts at the State Department was gathering oil and gas industry executives "to discuss the potential international impact of shale gas." Clinton then sent a cable to US diplomats, asking them to collect information on the potential for fracking in their host countries. These efforts eventually gave rise to the Global Shale Gas Initiative, which aimed to help other nations develop their shale potential. Clinton promised it would do so "in a way that is as environmentally respectful as possible."

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How Hillary Clinton's State Department Sold Fracking To ...

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks during a during a round table event to launch the "Talking is Teaching: Talk Read Sing" campaign at the Children's Hospital Oakland Research Institute on July 23, 2014 in Oakland, California. Justin Sullivan, Getty Images

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The former secretary of state during an event in Mexico City discussed the possibility that she'll mount a bid for the 2016 Democratic presidenti...

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tends to be much more popular when she's out of politics rather than in the thick of it, a new poll finds.

The latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll released Tuesday found that 43 percent of registered voters say they have a positive view of Clinton, a sharp drop from her approval rating of 59 percent in February 2009 when she had just been named President Obama's secretary of state. Forty-one percent of registered voters said in the most recent poll that they view Clinton negatively, compared with just 22 percent in 2009.

Polling from the same outlets has shown that Clinton's favorability remained over 50 percent during her entire tenure at the State Department and began their serious decline after she left office in the beginning of 2013.

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Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has a new book out that highlights her time at the State Department. "Hard Choices" is published by Sim...

Other politicians have not seen the same trend. Two former presidents, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, both saw their approval ratings rise once they left office. The difference, of course, is that Hillary Clinton's political life is not over as she is thinking about running for president again.

Her approval rating is especially precarious among Republicans. Although roughly a quarter of registered GOP voters said they viewed Clinton positively in 2009, that number fell to just 14 percent in the latest poll. Her negative ratings also jumped from 52 percent in 2009 to 70 percent this month among Republicans.

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Hillary Clinton's poll numbers are better when she's out of politics

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Washington (CNN) -- Ready for Hillary, a super PAC founded by Hillary Clinton devotees, has started to grease the wheels of state politics, currying favor with local Democrats by exchanging important data about the group's supporters with Senate and House campaigns ahead of the 2014 midterms.

The list exchanges are a clear attempt by the super PAC to build goodwill and to win over state parties ahead of a possible Clinton presidential run in 2016.

To date, the PAC has exchanged records with campaigns in 14 different states: Six U.S. Senate campaigns, four House races, four gubernatorial campaigns and three Democratic committees and organizations, according to a person familiar with the list swaps.

In return, Ready for Hillary is receiving data from each campaign and growing their list of possible volunteers and donors ahead of 2016.

Representatives from the group declined to name specific campaigns with which they have swapped names, citing confidentially agreements with each campaign.

Ready for Hillary has built the list a number of ways.

Supporters become part of the group's voter file when they give a donation or attend an event put on by the group. The PAC has held over 500 events across the country -- the majority of which were in early presidential primary and caucus states. All of those names, emails and phone numbers, along with some other details, go into the Ready for Hillary voter file.

Although seemingly simple, there is power in the names. Some political data experts argue a good data file is worth more than donations.

A former state party data director, who asked for anonymity to speak candidly, said getting names from a national organization is an "enormously helpful."

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Hoping for '16 payoff, Ready for Hillary greases midterm wheels

Hillary Clinton explained how she sees technology fitting into the recovering US economy, at Nexenta OpenSDx conference. Here are nine things we learned.

Presumed presidential candidate and former Secretary of State and First Lady Hillary Clinton discussed her views on tech last week, speaking at the Nexenta OpenSDx conference in San Francisco. Addressing a crowd that included the CEOs of several major tech companies, she confessed to being a little out of her depth.

"I have to start by admitting I'm not an expert in software-defined storage. Or the intricacies of cloud computing," she said, drawing amused applause. "But I have learned enough to be tremendously excited about how the advances you are making are helping to build a 21st century American economy that is vibrant and dynamic, and if we make smart choices and investments, inclusive and broadly shared as well."

What could another Clinton administration mean for the tech industry and the nation at large? Here are nine things we learned from Hillary Clinton's appearance at OpenSDx.

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1. Clinton believes cloud computing, big data, and SDN are engines for US economic growth. Clinton emphasized that tech has and will continue to play a key role in America's recovery from the Great Recession. "The power of the Internet wasn't just dot-coms," she said. "It was wonderful to see new companies creating jobs, but more important were the productivity gains that computing and the Internet brought to industries we wouldn't think of as being high-tech."

Clinton argued current tech trends such as cloud computing, big data analytics, and software-defined architectures will fuel future rounds of US growth. She briefly cited a range of ways in which new technologies will change traditionally non-tech fields, from farmers' use of weather data to stores that use real-time data to optimize retail and distribution operations. She also echoed a favorite talking point of her husband, former president Bill Clinton, describing tech's potential impact on healthcare alone as "staggering."

[Read the rest of this article on InformationWeek. ]

Michael Endler joined InformationWeek as an associate editor in 2012. He previously worked in talent representation in the entertainment industry, as a freelance copywriter and photojournalist, and as a teacher. Michael earned a BA in English from Stanford University in 2005 ... View Full Bio

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Hillary Clinton Talks Tech: 9 Facts

With a public record spanning more than two decades, there is little left to learn about Hillary Rodham Clinton except where she stands on a host of key issues.

As she gears up for a likely presidential run in 2016, the former secretary of state has been deliberately vague, analysts say, in her positions on National Security Agency snooping, the violence in Ferguson, Missouri, central aspects of the Obama administrations foreign policy and other issues.

With no obvious, viable threat to her partys nomination, Mrs. Clinton is able to straddle the fence on any number of controversial topics with little consequence, analysts say.

Last month, Mrs. Clinton offered seemingly strong comments on the unrest in Ferguson, where a white police officer fatally shot 18-year-old Michael Brown, who was black.

In a San Francisco speech late last month, she said the racial tensions in Ferguson and elsewhere, coupled with distrust between citizens and police, are real problems that must be confronted.

Behind the dramatic, terrible pictures on television are deep challenges that will be with them and with us long after the cameras move on, she said. This is what happens when the bonds of trust and respect that hold any community together fray. Nobody wants to see our streets look like a war zone, not in America. We are better than that.

But Mrs. Clinton also measured her words carefully and went out of her way to compliment police officers in Ferguson, who have borne the brunt of the blame for Browns death and the chaos that ensued.

We saw our countrys true character in the community leaders who came out to protest peacefully and worked to restrain violence; the young people who insisted on having their voices heard; and in the many decent and respectful law enforcement officers who showed what quality law enforcement looks like, she said.

Although Mrs. Clintons words about Ferguson highlight the benefits of having such a vast lead in the Democratic presidential primary process, she was in a similar position at this same point in the 2008 election cycle. Throughout 2006, she was the presumptive nominee with an overwhelming poll lead and no viable challengers, and was carefully staking out non-alienating positions.

However, she was in fact defeated and may have to learn (and not learn) from the man who beat her: Barack Obama.

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Hillary Clinton can afford to be vague on issues with no strong rival