We have previously discussed the series of scandals in Washington where powerful individuals have been spared serious sanctions for acts where ordinary people have faced long and unrelenting prosecution. (here) It is part of America’s Animal Farm system where some individuals are more equal than others. That concern is even greater this week with the combination of the disclosure that Hillary Clinton did use a personal email system for classified communications and most media outlets appear to be ignoring the obvious import of that fact.
From the outset of this scandal, I have noted that the suggestion that such a system could be used without risking the release of classified information is facially absurd. I have had a TS/SCI clearance since Reagan due to my national security work and have lived under the restrictions imposed on email and other systems. The system is so stringent that just last month I had to personally deliver a routine motion in a national security case that was clearly unclassified because there was a concern about sending it by email for a review of the security officer. It dealt with changing a scheduling date. Violations of such rules are treated harshly and can easily result in criminal prosecution.
For the Secretary of State, a great percentage of material passing through her office is treated as presumptively classified. The idea of using a personal email system for such a high official in such a highly classified office is otherworldly. Moreover, few people buy the argument that this was not done to control information but to avoid carrying multiple phones, as suggested by Clinton. This would seem one area where the Clintons (often criticized for making their own rules) would seem bound to follow security protocols. Clinton insisted that no material was classified and that this was not an effort on her part to insulate her communications from outside review.
Now the State Department has marked at least a couple dozen emails as classified. We will likely never know how many of the thousands of deleted emails were classified and possibly subject to foreign surveillance. A State Department official has admitted that 25 emails were deemed classified. This would seem to contradict Clinton’s assurance to the public that she “did not email any classified material to anyone” on her personal account and “There is no classified material. So I’m certainly well aware of the classification requirements and did not send classified material.”
The best defense is that this material was not technically classified at the time that it was sent. Thus it was not “classified” information. The problem is that it was not reviewed and classified because it was kept out of the State Department system. Moreover, most high-level communications are treated as classified and only individually marked as classified when there is a request for disclosure. For example, there is not a person standing next to the President with a classification stamp in the Oval Office. However, those communications are deemed as presumptively classified and are not disclosed absent review. Under the same logic, the President could use a personal email system because his text messages by definition are not marked as classified. This is the whole reason that Clinton and others were told to use the protected email system run by the State Department. We have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to secure such systems.
The State Department appears intent to avoid a conflict with Clinton over this circumvention of their secure system. Indeed, there appears to be a general and concerted effort to avoid the obvious in this scandal: clearly some of this material was classified and Clinton intentionally used a system to be under her control and not the government. I view that as quite serious — as I do the relative avoidance of the implications by many in the media. At best this shows appalling judgment while at worse it shows a knowing risk or exposure of presumptively classified material to foreign interception. The public can judge for itself if Clinton is being truthful in saying that she never sought to create a system that would be under her control and simply did not want to carry two phones or devices. That is a political question. The active circumvention of a secure system and possible exposure of classified information is a legal question . . . and a rather important one.
I doubt anyone here knows more about computers than Darren. Thanks Darren, for giving some clarity to the Clinton and Clintonista Orwellian BS.
Forgotwhoiam
It’s the ’50s all over again. What vitriol, what danger to the American ideal, what extremism, what ignorance.
And Jill, Karen would never vote for either one of those three people, Stein, Webb or Chaffee.
Annie, I bet you love Babs Boxer as well, right?….
Jill, I voted for Jill Stein in 2012. She lost big time. Jim Webb is a blue dog Democrat, he would not represent me. Lincoln Chaffee as nice as he seems, is a bit of a joke.
Annie, Democrats told each other to vote for Obama because he was the lesser of two evils and to do otherwise would waste your vote? Do you really think that has worked out for the people of the US and the world, because from where I stand he is doing an amazing amount of damage. What do the people ‘WIN” when you vote to “win”? You’ve got murder, torture, bank bailouts of criminal prosecutions, the Fast Track, wars. Please explain how a vote for Obama wasn’t a wasted vote as far as ordinary people are concerned.
I also gave you the name of two other Democratic candidates for president. What’s wrong with even looking into them?
I’m with Karen, vote your conscience. Doing so is one of the most powerful acts a citizen can do. Then never just stop at voting. Be a strong, questioning citizen who cares about our nation, it’s people and this planet. That would mean you’d have to go up against your party, but you should do that and so should Republicans. Too much is at stake not to.
KAREN S.
I think the mindset is blind partisanship. It can be found at both (or all) ends of the political spectrum.
Any productive dialogue with partisan political hacks is likely to be unproductive. They are incapable of objectivity, or concessions re the deficiencies of ,”their ,”candidates.
They are, and will continue to be, out it force on the road to the Hillary Coronation as the Democratic nominee. The blindly partisan Clinton supporters have had at least 20-25 years to refine their game of non-accountiblity.
For the record, I’ll level these same criticisms against unbalanced rants that may be expressed in support of the Republican nominee.
It is so unfortunate that, according to the polls, Democrats will vote for Hillary Clinton no matter what she does, how many laws she breaks, or if she maintains media blackout and refuses to answer any tough questions during her entire run.
I just don’t understand that mindset. I would never vote for a candidate that went against my conscience, just because I didn’t want to vote for another side. But I have a history of voting for whomever I thought was the best candidate, abstaining when I had no clear favorite.
I believe that Democrats want to win not matter the cost. They will vote for a woman who’s been proven to lie and break the law just to get a Dem in the chair. I think they are wrong to act this way, because it affects the rest of us. It’s judging good and evil though political glasses.
Issac,
You’re expounding on the principles of the Communist Manifesto. What good are the Preamble, Constitution and Bill of Rights? There is no point to the American founding documents and foundational positions written by the Framers. Your goal is the “fundamentally transform” America to a variant of communism.
You contradict, repudiate, void and nullify the Preamble, Constitution and Bill of Rights, as you advocate and support the principles of the Communist Manifesto, as compulsory populace integration, denial of private property, control of the means of production, central planning and redistribution of wealth.
The American thesis is freedom and self-reliance as people adapt to and live with the consequences of freedom. If you’re an American, you accept freedom and self-reliance, which makes all that you promote unconstitutional. The only conclusion one can draw is that you are an anti-American communist.
Does that mean you’re a traitor or an insurrectionist, or both?
This is a funny world. The super patriot, the Paul Revere of his day, Edward Snowden, is in Russia and you, a treasonous and heretical subversive, are in here in America.
Good, objective analysis Isaac. “Democrats good, Republicans bad”.
The US is a complicated, hypocritical, perverse, corrupt, and unfair country that is also evolving to smooth itself out. There is good and bad to be found in greater amounts the higher up the ladder you go. The question, unfortunately, is how to we, as a nation, move up the societal evolution ladder? We had a taste of a Republican Presidency and they are typically followed by chaos and recession. Reagan is one example and Bush a far more extreme example. Clinton followed Reagan’s chaos and the US prospered. Obama is following the despicable Republican adventure that was the three stooges and is doing a yeoman’s job of cleaning up the mess and at the same time taking on entrenched cancers like health care insurance, Cuba, gay rights, etc. Obama is not over reaching or over stepping any more than any other President, Republican or Democrat. He ain’t perfect, that’s for sure. But, those that gotta hate will find any reason.
The issue at hand is the direction not the sausage making. Regardless of party the sausage making will go on. It would be wonderful to have a more competent, more legally correct, and perhaps taller candidate than Hillary but we don’t. What one needs to focus on is that we have worse in the Republican gang: Bush, Trump, Rubio, Jindal, Cruz, Walker, whoaa.
“Obama is the President, Nixon wanted to be.”
Hillary learned well from her “Nixon” experience.
Nixon should have just classified everything.
Problem was; Nixon didn’t have “Clinton, Inc.” and the “Clinton Crime Foundation” to learn from.
It helps when the crimes you commit are deliberately omitted from the nightly “news,” right, Hill?
How did Hillary turn a $1K investment in cattle futures, into $100K, overnight, using Tyson Chicken’s broker? Hillary can’t work a fax machine or make tea but she would have us believe she was capable of successfully investing in a technical market where most people fail.
Hillary and the Supreme Court. One great big joke – or “High crimes and misdemeanors.”
“What difference, at this point, does it make?”
Wait a minute, what about Benghazi? Are we finished there?
On a scale of one to ten this is but a two or three. She is being investigated and the truth will out. However, what is most telling is how some make this two or three into a ten. In a perfect world this would not be allowed but look around and compare and contrast the others. Clinton presents the least potential damage to the US. She represents the most potential for moving forward and carries the least amount of baggage with her experience.
So given that it will be a choice between Clinton and The Donald, or another Bush, or Rubio the vacuous punk, or Walker the McCarthy, or Cruz the ?, or anyone of the rest of that mob, taking into consideration that if a Republican got in you get the rest of the crazies along with him, do you really want to go back and down, and closer to out. Or, do you want to go forward to a less screwed up America. It may just be the lesser of the possible evils and not the best man or woman for the job.
Jill,
Jill Stein isn’t going to win diddly squat and a vote for her is wasted, sadly. If people don’t have realistic expectations they will have the worst of the options in office. I’m not willing to throw away my vote.
Darren these are great questions. I will say I’m quite certain NSA was her backup server. Here’s a link to how that works:
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/07/02/look-under-hood-xkeyscore/
Of course this was done for exactly the same reason as Dick Cheney made his energy task force “private” even though no thinking person would believe Cheney’s lie. “Private” means it’s off limits to the public. More and more of the govt. is functioning via private contractors and is thus unknown to our citizens. The TPP text is “private” from the public unless you are a very wealthy business owner. It’s so cynical.
Anne, Bernie is as phony as Obama and Warren. I am horrified at how easily Democrats are falling for the entire 2008 playbook so readily after 12 years of brand Obama. Of course Bernie can fill stadiums, so did Obama. Yes, he says some good things, as did Obama. Bernie has a track record that Democrats need to pay attention to. I don’t think they will, he’s the new savior along with Warren.
There are people like Lincoln Chafee and Jim Webb to investigate as candidates if people cannot bring themselves to vote outside the Democratic party. A good choice for president who happens to be a woman is Jill Stein of the Green Party.
And for the “there’s no evidence there ever was a breach” defense here is my answer.
Well, if you never had logging, tracing, supervision, or oversight enabled on a mail server of COURSE there would be no evidence–none was ever collected.
It astounds me how politicians or the likes delude themselves that they are so clever, the tech world will believe anything it is given.
The ClintonMail Server 1.0 debacle in this respect is identical to what occurred with the IRS email scandal. When I heard the IRS officials’ arguments I couldn’t believe the level of baloney they were throwing around that their ex-director’s email disappeared, it was the only server that crashed and she was the only user on that server. Then, when it was magically found, it would take months to recover. Poppycock. For the recovery it would have taken only a few minutes to copy all her email to another medium and present it for inspection. Now, more of the same type of deception.
Karen S … said
Nick – I am amused by the lawyer speak answers – “There is no evidence” not “I didn’t do it.”
Perfect. I’m waiting for the “blue dress moment” in this fandango. “I didn’t do it”…until, whoops I did!
Stay tuned.
The FBI should get a search warrant for her private residence where the mail server is alleged to be and take the server for a forensic analysis.
Several questions among the many.
1) Was the person who set up the server one with a security clearance and approved to do so by the federal government? (Likely answer is no). In our state a person legally cannot perform engineering work on a computer that has access to even license plate data unless they have a background check.
2) Was the email server software used by the computer certified for secret documents or was it some commercially available piece pulled off the internet? I wouldn’t doubt it was some freeware version.
3) Who is responsible for maintaining the Clinton server? Was it a State Department employee or Lenny down at Fred’s Fix-it shop? I don’t see Hillary or Bill Clinton having the expertise to admin a mail server.
4) Did the server use at bare minimum use encrypted S/MIME or other type of encryption or was it clear text?
5) Did the server use standard, unsecured SMTP and POP3 | IMAP4 exchange protocols? I’ll bet that these were cleartext and not the secured versions.
6) Did the server have a secure operating system or Disk Storage? There are mountains of regs dealing with how to secure this.
7) Did Hillary have a secure client / server connection and software for when she read her email?
It goes on and on an on. I suspect that most security protocols were not met.
The implications from Mrs. Clintons server/email indiscretions have yet to be determined or they’re being covered up. Add that, to her money laundering operation through the Clinton Foundation and international influence peddling, and those have solidified my opinion that she is not fit to be POTUS.
I’d rather that 3am phone call be a notice from the Justice Dept., that she is under arrest and will be collected and perp walked into a federal jail facility to be booked for federal crimes against the United States of America and its citizens.
Democrats have an issue, they have two choices to make. Select the 1st female as their presidential candidate or select the 1st socialist as one. Both are racist, just for being white, both are old and should die. . . according to Oprah and both are career politicians. Will a 3rd one declare. Are there any honest democrats still alive? lol
@Jack Reacher “If State wanted her to use their server, they could and should have so directed but did not. Get over it.” There is Federal Law requiring the use of their server. No further direction is or should be required.