Why a flummoxed Hillary Clinton missed a Cabinet meeting she found out about on the radio

One email from the State Department's dump of Hillary Clinton files Tuesday night caught the eye of Twitter.

"I heard on the radio that there is a Cabinet mtg this am. Is there? Can I go? If not, who are we sending?" Clinton, the former of secretary of state, emailed aides Lona Valmoro and Huma Abedin on Monday, June 8, 2009.

Yes, Hillary Clinton found out about a Cabinet meeting on the radio, and appeared to freak out and worry she wasn't invited.

Photos from the White House's Flickr account also appear to show that she's absent from the discussion:

White House/Flickr

White House/Flickr

But as the photos and subsequent emails showed, there was a reason neither she nor someone else from the State Department attended the meeting. The Cabinet gathered to discuss President Barack Obama's stimulus program - the "Roadmap to Recovery."

As Valmoro explained in a reply to Clinton, only agencies that received money to appropriate through the stimulus act were invited.

She told Clinton, however, that the State Department was welcome to send someone if she wished. Clinton said to ask either then-Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources Jack Lew (now the Treasury Secretary) or Pat Kennedy, the under secretary of state for management.

Here's the full chain of emails:

State Department