A 2008 email released by WikiLeaks on Monday appears to suggest that the Obama administration considered appointing Muslims to important administration positions who would have trouble passing vetting procedures — at least in the court of public opinion.

In the email, titled “Asian American Candidates, Muslim American Candidates,” future administration official Preeta D. Bansal, then a partner at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP, provided Michael B. Froman, a member of Obama’s transition team, with a list of potential Asian-Americans and Muslim-Americans for “top Administration jobs, sub-cabinet jobs, and outside boards/agencies/policy committees.”

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“High-profile Muslim Americans tend to be the subject of a fair amount of blogger criticism, and so the individuals on this list would need to be ESPECIALLY carefully vetted,” Bansal notes. “I suspect some of the people I list would not survive such a vet,” she admits.

It is unclear exactly what Bansal means, but she is likely suggesting that a deep search into many of the possible appointee’s past writings and public statements could uncover radical Islamist ties, sympathies, or tendencies — similar to how top Clinton aide Huma Abedin’s past ties to a radical Islamist publication run out of Saudi Arabia recently came to light.

It is interesting to note the administration official’s concern was not with the possible appointment of Muslims to top government posts, but rather that their sympathies could become public knowledge.

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Not only did Bansal believe some of those on her list wouldn’t survive vetting, but she took meticulous care to ensure Christian Arabs did not make that list. “In the candidates for top jobs, I excluded those with some Arab American background but who are not Muslim,” Bansal writes. “Many Lebanese Americans, for example, are Christian,” she explains.

Bansal would go on to become general counsel and senior policy adviser to the federal Office of Management and Budget in the Obama administration from 2009 until 2011.