Hillary Clinton

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is in talks with one of her family's "staunchest loyalists", former White House aide Sidney Blumenthal, to serve as a consultant to the State Department, the New York Times reported said Wednesday.

Blumenthal, who worked as an aide to president Bill Clinton from 1997 to 2001, would work with Hillary Clinton's speechwriting team, an administration official told the Times on condition of anonymity because the appointment was not yet public and could still fall through.

Blumenthal and State Department spokesman Ian C. Kelly had no comments.

The Times noted that the possible appointment was first reported by The Cable, a blog of the magazine Foreign Policy.

A prominent journalist who has recently worked as Washington bureau chief for the website Salon.com, Blumenthal has been a "passionate defender" of the Clintons through some of their most trying times. In 2007, he was an adviser to Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign.

Clinton has put a handful of aides from her White House days into senior posts, including Cheryl Mills, her chief of staff, the Times added.