There is another surprising report out today on the Clinton email scandal. Fox News Reporter Catherine Herridge is reporting that at least one of the emails on Hillary Clinton’s private server contained extremely sensitive information identified as “HCS-O,” the code used for reporting on human intelligence sources in ongoing operations. We previously discussed the disclosure that emails had been identified with Special Access Program information that even the Inspector General could not review without added clearances. In the meantime, some in the Clinton camp may be singing “Let It Snow, Let It Snow.” The State Department is citing the winter storm for yet another delay in releasing the remaining emails — possibly pushing their release past the first primary contests. Any break would likely be welcomed, particularly after a growing number of people including Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates have said that Clinton’s decision to use an unsecure private email system probably resulted in the emails being hacked by various hostile powers.
According to a December 2013 policy document released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence: This designation “is used to protect exceptionally fragile and unique IC (intelligence community) clandestine HUMINT operations and methods that are not intended for dissemination outside of the originating agency.” That is the type of information that is most shielded from interception due to the risk to human lives. Since Clinton was one of the top targets for intelligence services, the transmittal of such information over an insecure line would be grossly negligent and potentially criminal.
Fox is also reporting that the “spillage” of classified information is greater than the “several dozen” emails identified in the January 14 letter to Congress, which also acknowledged for the first time, that the Clinton emails contained intelligence beyond Top Secret, also known as Special Access Programs (SAPs).
For all of these reasons, one can certainly appreciate if the campaign this month changes its theme song:
@Paul C. Schulte.
1, January 30, 2016 at 10:12 pm
“Ken Rogers – I think the very definition of traitor requires you to deal with the enemy, not your allies. If I read your materials correctly, he was talking to the South Vietnamese, not the North Vietnamese. I think that is allowed.”
I said Nixon’s behavior was “arguably treasonous,” in terms of its being a violation of the Logan Act. Others have not been as circumspect as I:
“Richard Nixon was a traitor.
“The new release of extended versions of Nixon’s papers now confirms this long-standing belief, usually dismissed as a ‘conspiracy theory’ by Republican conservatives. Now it has been substantiated by none other than right-wing columnist George Will.
“Nixon’s newly revealed records show for certain that in 1968, as a presidential candidate, he ordered Anna Chennault, his liaison to the South Vietnam government, to persuade them to refuse a cease-fire being brokered by President Lyndon Johnson.
“Nixon’s interference with these negotiations violated President John Adams’s 1797 Logan Act, banning private citizens from intruding into official government negotiations with a foreign nation.
“Published as the 40th Anniversary of Nixon’s resignation approaches, Will’s column confirms that Nixon feared public disclosure of his role in sabotaging the 1968 Vietnam peace talks.
“Will says Nixon established a ‘plumbers unit’ to stop potential leaks of information that might damage him, including documentation [Walt Rostow’s “X-File” on Nixon’s sabotage] that he believed was held by the Brookings Institute, a liberal think tank. The Plumbers’ later break-in at the Democratic National Committee led to the Watergate scandal that brought Nixon down. (My emphasis)
“Nixon’s sabotage of the Vietnam peace talks was confirmed by transcripts of FBI wiretaps. On November 2, 1968, LBJ received an FBI report saying Chernnault told the South Vietnamese ambassador that ‘she had received a message from her boss: saying the Vietnamese should “hold on, we are gonna win.’
“As Will confirms, Vietnamese did ‘hold on,’ the war proceeded and Nixon did win, changing forever the face of American politics—with the shadow of treason permanently embedded in its DNA. The treason came in 1968 as the Vietnam War reached a critical turning point. President Lyndon Johnson was desperate for a truce between North and South Vietnam.
“LBJ had an ulterior motive: his Vice President, Hubert Humphrey, was in a tight presidential race against Richard Nixon. With demonstrators in the streets, Humphrey desperately needed a cease-fire to get him into the White House.
“Johnson had it all but wrapped it. With a combination of gentle and iron-fisted persuasion, he forced the leaders of South Vietnam into an all-but-final agreement with the North. A cease-fire was imminent, and Humphrey’s election seemed assured.
“But at the last minute, the South Vietnamese pulled out. LBJ suspected Nixon had intervened to stop them from signing a peace treaty.
“In the Price of Power (1983), Seymour Hersh revealed Henry Kissinger—then Johnson’s adviser on Vietnam peace talks—secretly alerted Nixon’s staff that a truce was imminent.
“According to Hersh, Nixon ‘was able to get a series of messages to the Thieu government [of South Vietnam] making it clear that a Nixon presidency would have different views on peace negotiations.’
Johnson was livid. He even called the Republican Senate Minority Leader, Everett Dirksen, to complain that ‘they oughtn’t be doing this. This is treason.’
“ ‘I know,’ was Dirksen’s feeble reply.”
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2014/08/12/george-will-confirms-nixons-vietnam-treason
Ken Rogers – treason still requires you to trade or deal with the enemy. Nixon may or may not have violated the Logan Act, but that does not make him a traitor.
@John
1, January 30, 2016 at 3:50 pm
“How about you? The official apologist for all the ‘anti-Americans’ everywhere.
And Nixon’s transgression was purloining a file from a cabinet?”
“Mr. Rogers, you should make it clear to your readers that you are directly related to Karl Marx, with all the attendant sympathies.
“Why hide it?”
——————–
Because I don’t share your hero worship of and excuse-making for Richard Nixon, I’m a Marxist and “the official apologist for all the ‘anti-Americans’ everywhere?”
I’m afraid that your fervent brand of anti-communism has, to put it charitably, seriously skewed your thinking and your ability to interpret my many anti-authoritarian and anti-collectivist comments, here.
Your blanket defense of Nixon under the rubric of his having been a staunch anti-communist is analogous to a latter-day German’s overlooking Hitler’s crimes because of his staunch anti-communism.
Watergate was among the least of Nixon’s crimes, his sabotaging of the Paris peace talks while running for president and his subsequent behavior as president being rather more heinously criminal:
”Once in office he escalated the war into Laos and Cambodia, with the loss of an additional 22,000 American lives – quite apart from the lives of the Laotians, Cambodians, and Vietnamese caught up in the new offensives – before finally settling for a peace agreement in 1973 that was within grasp in 1968.”
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21768668
J. Edgar Hoover was one of the more contemptible self-promoting, authoritarian hacks ever to besmirch the American political landscape, and I say that knowing full well that he had a great deal of competition for that distinction.
With regard to Karl Marx, my own view of dialectical materialism is fully sympathetic with that of two of his most powerful philosophical critics, Max Stirner and Rudolf Steiner, the latter having written, “Of all forms of power, what is being striven for by social democracy [Communist ideology], is the worst.”
http://www.uncletaz.com/anthranark.html#anthranarch13
As a freshman in college, I supported Nixon when he ran against JFK for president, because I thought he would be able to stand up to the Russians in a way that Kennedy couldn’t, but by 1965, I was publicly protesting US involvement in the Vietnamese civil war which turned it into an exponentially more horrific bloodbath.
Nixon’s (arguably treasonous) role in the Vietnam War’s prolongation has, to put it mildly, rather seriously disabused me of any admiration I may have once had for the man, in my politically naive youth.
I hope this clarification of my post-power-politics orientation has been helpful.
Ken Rogers – I think the very definition of traitor requires you to deal with the enemy, not your allies. If I read your materials correctly, he was talking to the South Vietnamese, not the North Vietnamese. I think that is allowed.
Ken Rogers,
What was Hillary’s first crime? The Tyson bribe? What was Bill’s? Monica Lewinsky or the facilitating and accepting Hillary’s Tyson bribe to the Governor’s wife, or his Oxford affair or Vince Foster?
What was Obama’s, fraud, misrepresentation and providing false information on a job application, considering the fact that we all know he is not a constitutionally required “natural born citizen?”
What was Roosevelt’s crime? His alliance with convicted communists and communist spies like Alger Hiss? The imposition of the principles of communism from Social Security to Medicare to 70 years of the welfare state, including a cost of $22 trillion for funding the endless “War on Poverty” which, by the way, Poverty won.
J. Edgar Hoover and his “partner” must have been angels on the “straight and narrow” – you make no mention of this couple and their abuse of the power of government against the People, in your lecture on treasonous acts. How about honorable mention of the Dulles brothers and Carlos Marcelo, under the very eyes of Hoover and his “partner,” and their coup de etat?
What is the liberal collectivist democrat crime of “progressively” and “fundamentally transforming” America into a communist slave state with
Central Planning
Control of the Means of Production
Social Engineering
Redistribution of Wealth
You might want to review the American founding documents and the writings of the Founders. Not one hint of the aforementioned communism exists in those papers.
It’s a constant battle between good and evil and Nixon was trying to defend America from communists.
Every person in the world is an “American-In-Waiting.” Waiting to arrive and claim his “free stuff,” paid for by the “free” American taxpayer. That never came close to happening in 1789. Why?
How about you? The official apologist for all the “anti-Americans” everywhere.
And Nixon’s transgression was purloining a file from a cabinet?
_____
Lisa N,
W. Mark Felt, “Deep Throat,” was convicted in a criminal trial of unauthorized break-ins and was said to have been peeved at Nixon for being passed over for the top FBI job – a disgruntled employee.
Apparently, he was so ashamed and guilt ridden for having broken usual and customary political protocols, he hid in the shadows as a coward until overtaken by dementia and death.
W. Mark Felt was an associate director, under J. Edgar Hoover and his “partner,” at the Federal Bureau of Investigation when he leaked the information and was said to be peeved at being passed over for the top FBI job.
Felt organized unauthorized break-ins.
As a consequence of these illegal break-ins, in 1980 he was convicted in a criminal trial and charged for having “conspired to violate citizens’ Fourth Amendment rights to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures.”
Time
_____
Lisa N,
Richard Nixon was a great American.
Richard Nixon was a loyal patriot who convicted the communist spy, Alger Hiss. He served as Dwight Eisenhower’s Vice President for eight years. After Eisenhower’s term the families socialized. Nixon’s charming daughter married Eisenhower’s grandson and they became one family.
Ironically, Nixon paid the political price for the Kennedy-Johnson Viet Nam War. In the Watergate affair, his staff jimmied an office door lock and purloined a file from a cabinet. A Machiavellian Hoover-era FBI official, a convicted felon consumed with self-loathing and hiding in the shadows, exposed information on usual and customary political protocols and kept his secret as a coward until he faded into dementia and death.
_____
Mr. Rogers, you should make it clear to your readers that you are directly related to Karl Marx, with all the attendant sympathies.
Why hide it?
@John
1, January 23, 2016 at 7:07 pm
“Lisa N,
“Richard Nixon was a great American.
“Richard Nixon was a loyal patriot who convicted the communist spy, Alger Hiss. He served as Dwight Eisenhower’s Vice President for eight years. After Eisenhower’s term the families socialized. Nixon’s charming daughter married Eisenhower’s grandson and they became one family.
“Ironically, Nixon paid the political price for the Kennedy-Johnson Viet Nam War.”
—————————————
“Declassified tapes of President Lyndon Johnson’s telephone calls provide a fresh insight into his world. Among the revelations – he planned a dramatic entry into the 1968 Democratic Convention to re-join the presidential race. And he caught Richard Nixon sabotaging the Vietnam peace talks… but said nothing. (Emphasis added)
“After the Watergate scandal taught Richard Nixon the consequences of recording White House conversations, none of his successors has dared to do it. But Nixon wasn’t the first. He got the idea from his predecessor Lyndon Johnson, who felt there was an obligation to allow historians to eventually eavesdrop on his presidency.
” ‘They will provide history with the bark off,’ Johnson told his wife, Lady Bird. The final batch of tapes released by the LBJ library covers 1968, and allows us to hear Johnson’s private conversations as his Democratic Party tore itself apart over the question of Vietnam.
“The 1968 convention, held in Chicago, was a complete shambles. Tens of thousands of anti-war protesters clashed with Mayor Richard Daley’s police, determined to force the party to reject Johnson’s Vietnam war strategy.
“As they taunted the police with cries of ‘The whole world is watching!’ one man in particular was watching very closely. Lyndon Baines Johnson was at his ranch in Texas, having announced five months earlier that he wouldn’t seek a second term.
“The president was appalled at the violence and although many of his staff sided with the students, and told the president the police were responsible for ‘disgusting abuse of police power,’ Johnson picked up the phone, ordered the dictabelt machine to start recording and congratulated Mayor Daley for his handling of the protest. The president feared the convention delegates were about to reject his war policy and his chosen successor, Hubert Humphrey.
“So he placed a series of calls to his staff at the convention to outline an astonishing plan. He planned to leave Texas and fly into Chicago. “Johnson discusses with an aide if Chicago’s Mayor Richard Daley can help him make a comeback at the convention He would then enter the convention and announce he was putting his name forward as a candidate for a second term.
“It would have transformed the 1968 election. His advisers were sworn to secrecy and even Lady Bird did not know what her husband was considering. On the White House tapes we learn that Johnson wanted to know from Daley how many delegates would support his candidacy. LBJ wanted to get back into the race only if Daley could guarantee the party would fall in line behind him.
“They also discussed whether the president’s helicopter, Marine One, could land on top of the Hilton Hotel to avoid the anti-war protesters. Daley assured him enough delegates would support his nomination, but the plan was shelved after the Secret Service warned the president they could not guarantee his safety.
“The idea that Johnson might have been the candidate, and not Hubert Humphrey, is just one of the many secrets contained on the White House tapes.<B
“Lyndon B Johnson: ‘Our friend, the Republican nominee… has been playing… with our enemies and our allies’
“They also shed light on a scandal that, if it had been known at the time, would have sunk the candidacy of Republican presidential nominee, Richard Nixon. By the time of the election in November 1968, LBJ had evidence Nixon had sabotaged the Vietnam war peace talks – or, as he put it, that Nixon was guilty of treason and had ‘blood on his hands.’
“The BBC’s former Washington correspondent Charles Wheeler learned of this in 1994 and conducted a series of interviews with key Johnson staff, such as defence secretary Clark Clifford, and national security adviser Walt Rostow.
“But by the time the tapes were declassified in 2008 all the main protagonists had died, including Wheeler. Now, for the first time, the whole story can be told.
“It begins in the summer of 1968. Nixon feared a breakthrough at the Paris Peace talks designed to find a negotiated settlement to the Vietnam war, and he knew this would derail his campaign.
He therefore set up a clandestine back-channel involving Anna Chennault, a senior campaign adviser.
“At a July meeting in Nixon’s New York apartment, the South Vietnamese ambassador was told Chennault represented Nixon and spoke for the campaign. If any message needed to be passed to the South Vietnamese president, Nguyen Van Thieu, it would come via Chennault.
“In late October 1968 there were major concessions from Hanoi which promised to allow meaningful talks to get underway in Paris – concessions that would justify Johnson calling for a complete bombing halt of North Vietnam. This was exactly what Nixon feared.
“The Paris peace talks may have ended years earlier, if it had not been for Nixon’s subterfuge
“Chennault was dispatched to the South Vietnamese embassy with a clear message: the South Vietnamese government should withdraw from the talks, refuse to deal with Johnson, and if Nixon was elected, they would get a much better deal.
“So on the eve of his planned announcement of a halt to the bombing, Johnson learned the South Vietnamese were pulling out. He was also told why. The FBI had bugged the ambassador’s phone, and a transcript of Anna Chennault’s calls were sent to the White House. In one conversation she tells the ambassador to ‘just hang on through the election.’ Johnson was told by Defence Secretary Clifford that the interference was illegal and threatened the chance for peace.
“In a series of remarkable White House recordings we can hear Johnson’s reaction to the news. “In one call to Senator Richard Russell he says: ‘We have found that our friend, the Republican nominee, our California friend, has been playing on the outskirts with our enemies and our friends both, he has been doing it through rather subterranean sources. Mrs. Chennault is warning the South Vietnamese not to get pulled into this Johnson move.’
“He orders the Nixon campaign to be placed under FBI surveillance and demands to know if Nixon is personally involved. When he became convinced it was being orchestrated by the Republican candidate, the president called Senator Everett Dirksen, the Republican leader in the Senate to get a message to Nixon.
“The president knew what was going on, Nixon should back off and the subterfuge amounted to treason.
“Publicly Nixon was suggesting he had no idea why the South Vietnamese withdrew from the talks. He even offered to travel to Saigon to get them back to the negotiating table.
“Johnson felt it was the ultimate expression of political hypocrisy, but in calls recorded with Clifford they express the fear that going public would require revealing the FBI were bugging the ambassador’s phone and the National Security Agency (NSA) was intercepting his communications with Saigon. So they decided to say nothing.
“The president did let Humphrey know and gave him enough information to sink his opponent. But by then, a few days from the election, Humphrey had been told he had closed the gap with Nixon and would win the presidency. So Humphrey decided it would be too disruptive to the country to accuse the Republicans of treason, if the Democrats were going to win anyway.
“Nixon ended his campaign by suggesting the administration war policy was in shambles. They couldn’t even get the South Vietnamese to the negotiating table. He won by less than 1% of the popular vote.
”Once in office he escalated the war into Laos and Cambodia, with the loss of an additional 22,000 American lives – quite apart from the lives of the Laotians, Cambodians, and Vietnamese caught up in the new offensives – before finally settling for a peace agreement in 1973 that was within grasp in 1968.” (Emphasis added)
“The White House tapes, combined with Wheeler’s interviews with key White House personnel, provide an unprecedented insight into how Johnson handled a series of crises that rocked his presidency. Sadly, we will never have that sort of insight again.”
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21768668
Hillary Clinton’s role in the Oregon standoff is mentioned in this video.
“If the President does it, that means that it is not illegal.”
@John
1, January 24, 2016 at 1:51 pm
“Lisa N,
“W. Mark Felt, ‘Deep Throat,’ was convicted in a criminal trial of unauthorized break-ins and was said to have been peeved at Nixon for being passed over for the top FBI job – a disgruntled employee.
“Apparently, he was so ashamed and guilt ridden for having broken usual and customary political protocols, he hid in the shadows as a coward until overtaken by dementia and death.”
Yes, if it hadn’t been for that cowardly rat-fink, Mark Felt, Nixon and his merry band of malefactors could have continued to patriotically serve their country, even when they had to do so by criminal means:
“The Watergate Seven has two meanings: (1) it refers to the five men caught June 17, 1972 burglarizing the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters in the Watergate Hotel and their two handlers, E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy (two Nixon campaign aides), all of whom were tried before Judge John Sirica in January 1973;[1] (2) it refers to the seven advisors and aides to United States President Richard M. Nixon who were indicted by a grand jury on March 1, 1974 for their role in the Watergate scandal. The grand jury also named Nixon an unindicted conspirator. The indictments marked the first time in U.S. history that a president was so named.[2] (Emphasis added)
“The period leading up to the trial of the first Watergate Seven began on January 8, 1973.[3] The term ‘Watergate Seven’ was coined a few months later, in April 1973, by American lawyer, politician, and political commentator Ed Koch, who, in response to U.S. Senator Lowell P. Weicker, Jr.’s indicating that one of the men in Watergate bugging case had been ordered in the spring of 1972 to keep certain Senators and Representatives under surveillance, posted a sign on the door of his United States Congress office saying, ‘These premises were surveilled by the Watergate Seven. Watch yourself’.[4]
“The seven advisors and aides later indicted in 1974 were:[5]
• John N. Mitchell – former United States Attorney General and director of Nixon’s 1968 and 1972 election campaigns; faced a maximum of 30 years in prison and $42,000 in fines; on February 21, 1975, Mitchell was found guilty of conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and perjury and sentenced to two and a half to eight years in prison, which was later reduced to one to four years; Mitchell actually served 19 months.
• H. R. Haldeman – White House chief of staff, considered the second most powerful man in the government during Nixon’s first term; faced a maximum of 25 years in prison and $16,000 in fines; in 1975, he was convicted of conspiracy and obstruction of justice and received an 18-month prison sentence.
• John Ehrlichman – former assistant to Nixon in charge of domestic affairs; faced a maximum of 25 years in prison and $40,000 in fines. Ehrlichman was convicted of conspiracy, obstruction of justice, perjury and other charges; he served 18 months in prison.
• Charles Colson – former White House counsel specializing in political affairs; pleaded nolo contendere on June 3, 1974 to one charge of obstruction of justice, having persuaded prosecution to change the charge from one of which he believed himself innocent to another of which he believed himself guilty, in order to testify freely.;[6] he was sentenced to 1 to 3 years of prison and fined $5,000; Colson served seven months.
• Gordon C. Strachan – White House aide to Haldeman; faced a maximum of 15 years in prison and $20,000 in fines. Charges against him were dropped before trial.
• Robert Mardian – aide to Mitchell and counsel to the Committee to Re-elect the President in 1972; faced 5 years in prison and $5,000 in fines. His conviction was overturned on appeal.[7]
• Kenneth Parkinson – counsel for the Committee to Re-elect the President; faced 10 years in prison and $10,000 in fines. He was acquitted at trial. Although Parkinson was a lawyer, G. Gordon Liddy was in fact counsel for the Committee to Re-elect the President.
“Nixon revealed much later that he would not grant amnesty to the Watergate Seven because, if he did so, Nixon would have been pressured to provide amnesty for Vietnam draft dodgers and this would have gratified his liberal elite opponents.[8] (Emphasis added) 🙂
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watergate_Seven
Regrettably, Mark Felt didn’t serve a single day of his own sentence, having been pardoned by President Reagan.
Hillary Clinton’s Email Scandal Appears Gravely Criminal
By Andrew C. McCarthy January 25, 2016
From the start, since we first learned about the home-brew email system then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton set up for conducting her government business, I’ve argued that she very likely committed felony violations of federal law. Yet it appears I underestimated the gravity of her misconduct — ironically, by giving her the benefit of the doubt on a significant aspect of the scheme.
When the scandal went public in March 2015, Mrs. Clinton — already the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee — held a press conference to explain herself. Among other well-documented whoppers, she maintained that she had never stored classified documents on, or transmitted them via, her private server. I theorized that she was exploiting the public’s unfamiliarity with how classified information is handled in government systems:
In the government, classified documents are maintained on separate, super-highly secured systems. … Mrs. Clinton would not have been able to access classified documents even from a “.gov” account [i.e., a non-classified State Department account], much less from her private account — she’d need to use the classified system. In fact, many government officials with security clearances read “hard copies” of classified documents in facilities designed for that purpose rather than accessing them on computers.
[S]ince we’re dealing with Clintonian parsing here, we must consider the distinction between classified documents and classified information — the latter being what is laid out in the former. It is not enough for a government official with a top-secret clearance to refrain from storing classified documents on private e-mail; the official is also forbidden to discuss the information contained in those documents. The fact that Mrs. Clinton says she did not store classified documents on her private server, which is very likely true, does not discount the distinct possibility that she discussed classified matters in private e-mails.
In sum, knowing how physically difficult it is to move classified documents from the secured communications systems to the non-secured ones, I figured Mrs. Clinton’s claim that she had never done that was “very likely true.” Instead, I reasoned that her main violation would be privately communicating the substance of the information contained in classified documents, not transmitting the documents themselves.
While that would still be a felony, it was one she hoped to obscure and, if called on it, to dismiss as unintentional sloppiness by a busy government official, not willful flouting of the law.
My bad: The Clintons have made careers of defying our assumptions about how low they can go. I should have reminded myself that anything was possible.
Now, Paul Sperry reports that the FBI is probing indications that Mrs. Clinton did precisely what I assumed, because of the time and purposeful effort involved, she wouldn’t have done.
In his New York Post column over the weekend, Mr. Sperry explains the difference between the government systems for classified information — SIPRNet and JWICS (i.e., “Secret Internet Protocol Router Network” and “Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System”) — and its NIPRNet system (i.e., the Non-classified Internet Protocol Router Network).
As I noted in my National Review weekend column, we now know that highly classified information from the secure systems ended up on Clinton’s private, unsecured (and relatively easy to hack) system. That, however, is not the half of it. Sperry reports that the actual documents themselves appear to have ended up in Clinton’s unsecured system — but carefully shorn of their classified markings.
Quoting a veteran Diplomatic Security Service special agent named Raymond Fournier, Sperry elaborates:
[I]t’s clear from some of the classified emails made public that someone on Clinton’s staff essentially “cut and pasted” content from classified cables into the messages sent to her. The classified markings are gone, but the content is classified at the highest levels — and so sensitive in nature that “it would have been obvious to Clinton.” Most likely the information was, in turn, e-mailed to her via NIPRNet.
To work around the closed, classified systems, which are accessible only by secure desktop workstations whose hard drives must be removed and stored overnight in a safe, Clinton’s staff would have simply retyped classified information from the systems into the non-classified system or taken a screen shot of the classified document, Fournier said. “Either way, it’s totally illegal.”
Fornier added:
It takes a very conscious effort to move a classified e-mail or cable from the classified systems over to the unsecured open system and then send it to Hillary Clinton’s personal e-mail account[.] … That’s no less than a two-conscious-step process.
Sperry believes the FBI is focusing on three top Clinton aides at the State Department — chief-of-staff Cheryl Mills and deputies Huma Abedin and Jake Sullivan — as the potential culprits who carried out Clinton’s suspected scheme to defeat classified information protections.
“According to Catherine Herridge, the FBI has recovered the deleted emails.
Did not know that.
A fox news tweet from January 21. I don’t know why it didn’t make headlines.”
– Anonymous
“What difference – at this point, what difference does it make?”
New York Post:
“Clinton and her top aides had access to a Pentagon-run classified network that goes up to the Secret level, as well as a separate system used for Top Secret communications.
The two systems — the Secret Internet Protocol Router Network (SIPRNet) and Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System (JWICS) — are not connected to the unclassified system, known as the Non-Classified Internet Protocol Router Network (NIPRNet). You cannot e-mail from one system to the other, though you can use NIPRNet to send e-mails outside the government.
Somehow, highly classified information from SIPRNet, as well as even the super-secure JWICS, jumped from those closed systems to the open system and turned up in at least 1,340 of Clinton’s home e-mails — including several the CIA earlier this month flagged as containing ultra-secret Sensitive Compartmented Information and Special Access Programs, a subset of SCI.
SAP includes “dark projects,” such as drone operations, while SCI protects intelligence sources and methods.
Fox News reported Friday that at least one of Clinton’s e-mails included sensitive information on spies.
“It takes a very conscious effort to move a classified e-mail or cable from the classified systems over to the unsecured open system and then send it to Hillary Clinton’s personal e-mail account,” said Raymond Fournier, a veteran Diplomatic Security Service special agent. “That’s no less than a two-conscious-step process.”
He says it’s clear from some of the classified e-mails made public that someone on Clinton’s staff essentially “cut and pasted” content from classified cables into the messages sent to her. The classified markings are gone, but the content is classified at the highest levels — and so sensitive in nature that “it would have been obvious to Clinton.” Most likely the information was, in turn, e-mailed to her via NIPRNet.
To work around the closed, classified systems, which are accessible only by secure desktop workstations whose hard drives must be removed and stored overnight in a safe, Clinton’s staff would have simply retyped classified information from the systems into the non-classified system or taken a screen shot of the classified document, Fournier said. “Either way, it’s totally illegal.”
Clinton’s defense – that she never received anything marked classified – is true if you believe that she didn’t notice that at least some of the information in the emails were top secret. How could she not have realized that this was incredibly sensitive information?
Top Secret/SCI e-mails received by Clinton include a 2012 staff e-mail sent to the then-secretary containing investigative data about Benghazi terrorist suspects wanted by the FBI and sourcing a regional security officer. They also include a 2011 message from Clinton’s top aides that contains military intelligence from United States Africa Command gleaned from satellite images of troop movements in Libya, along with the travel and protection plans for Ambassador Christopher Stevens, who was later killed in a terrorist attack in Benghazi.
“Receiving Top Secret SAP intelligence outside secure channels is a mortal sin,” said Chris Farrell, director of investigations for Judicial Watch, the Washington-based public law firm that has successfully sued State for Clinton’s e-mails.
“A regular government employee would be crucified, and they are, routinely,” added Farrell, who as a former Army counterintelligence agent investigated such violations.
It would not surprise me if Hillary Clinton’s attorneys weren’t already talking to prosecutors about a plea deal. Based on what we know, it’s ridiculous for Clinton to continue to insist she’s innocent. The evidence is overwhelming, And the same goes for Clinton aides Huma Abedin, Cheryl Mills, and Jake Sullivan. They’re all complicit.
The only remaining question is whether any of them will go to jail.”
New York Post –
“Clinton originally denied that any of her emails contained classified information, but soon abandoned that claim. So far, 150 emails containing classified information have been identified on her server, including two that included information determined to be Top Secret.
She then fell back on the claim that none of the emails in question was “marked classified” at the time she was dealing with them. The marking is not what makes the material classified; it’s the nature of the information itself. As secretary of state, Clinton knew this, and in fact she would have been re-briefed annually on this point as a condition of maintaining her clearance to access classified information.
Then there’s location. Clinton knowingly set up her email system to route 100 percent of her emails to and through her unsecured server (including keeping copies stored on the server). She knowingly removed such documents and materials from authorized locations (her authorized devices and secure government networks) to an unauthorized location (her server).
Two examples demonstrate this point.
When Clinton would draft an email based on classified information, she was drafting that email on an authorized Blackberry, iPad or computer. But when she hit “send,” that email was knowingly routed to her unsecured server — an unauthorized location — for both storage and transfer.
Additionally, when Clinton moved the server to Platte River Networks (a private company) in June 2013, and then again when she transferred the contents of the server to her private lawyers in 2014, the classified materials were in each instance again removed to another unsecured location.
Next we have the lack of proper authority to move or hold classified information somewhere, i.e., the “unauthorized location.”
While it’s possible for a private residence to be an “authorized” location, and it’s also possible for non-government servers and networks to be “authorized” to house and transfer classified materials, there are specific and stringent requirements to achieve such status. Simply being secretary of state didn’t allow Clinton to authorize herself to deviate from the requirements of retaining and transmitting classified documents, materials and information.
There is no known evidence that her arrangement to use the private email server in her home was undertaken with proper authority.
Finally, there’s the intent to “retain” the classified documents or materials at an unauthorized location.
The very purpose of Clinton’s server was to intentionally retain documents and materials — all emails and attachments — on the server in her house, including classified materials.
The intent required is only to undertake the action, i.e., to retain the classified documents and materials in the unauthorized fashion addressed in this statute. That’s it.
It borders on inconceivable that Clinton didn’t know that the emails she received, and more obviously, the emails that she created, stored and sent with the server, would contain classified information.
Simply put, Mrs. Clinton is already in just as bad — or worse — of a legal situation than Petraeus faced.”
David B. Benson,
Thank you for the concession of the ad hominem attack. That was brutal.
Allow me to offer my condolences on your loss.
Fox News just does infotainment; makes stuff up.
Disappointed to see it here on Turley’s.
Nick…yeah, I’m still around. Had a very bad reaction to my first Chemo go round and wound up hospitalized and not giving much of a damn about anything. That said, I repeat my caution to anyone else who might be facing Chemo treatments to demand details of all potential side effects and further demand remedial RX meds in advance so they don’t get ambushed as I did. Just finished round 2 of 6 (2 to 3 weeks apart) and so far no adverse side effects, but I am using the appropriate meds as called for.
As for Hillary Clinton’s conduct, all I can say is she must have a trunk load of scandalous information on a lot of people to avoid indictment. It doesn’t matter how big or small a law (or laws) she broke, but it does matter that in her high position that she broke the law, intentionally. People dismiss her antics than go on to complain about the lawlessness of others….wonder how that happens? Any law that is perpetually unenforced is soon no longer a law in the actual sense of the term. Then everybody is doing it, as they say. Yet let some mid-range GS-09 Civil Servant get careless with classified documents or information and slam bang, there’s an indictment.
Glad I’m no longer working in that morass or deceit.
Lisa N,
W. Mark Felt, “Deep Throat,” was convicted in a criminal trial of unauthorized break-ins and was said to have been peeved at Nixon for being passed over for the top FBI job – a disgruntled employee.
Apparently, he was so ashamed and guilt ridden for having broken usual and customary political protocols, he hid in the shadows as a coward until overtaken by dementia and death.
W. Mark Felt was an associate director, under J. Edgar Hoover and his “partner,” at the Federal Bureau of Investigation when he leaked the information and was said to be peeved at being passed over for the top FBI job.
Felt organized unauthorized break-ins.
As a consequence of these illegal break-ins, in 1980 he was convicted in a criminal trial and charged for having “conspired to violate citizens’ Fourth Amendment rights to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures.”
Time
Little Larry “Are you saying you think we should take Hilde and the newest crazy one SERIOUSLY?”
Here’s something else that you can ignore, debase, trash, ridicule, discount as bat sh*t crazy conspiracy theorist tin hat garbage…Have at it small fry. Oh and please wake up. Thank you.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=hpv+vaccine+danger
Disney Princesses Go To The Gyno And Live Happily Ever After
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/disney-princesses-hpv_us_56a11f19e4b0404eb8f091a6
My Planet Remulak has be on duty to scan all sorts of communications and some from days of old. I can not find anything good to reveal on the Clinton emails. Who is Monica? That kept coming up.
Fogdog…..you ask basically where was everyone else to raise a flag? We got a couple options….we’ve been fully infiltrated by ppl who have their own agenda and dont care about litteral cannon fodder. (Dont care about the lives compromused) or we have a system that is so compartmentalized….that very few know what the left hand is doing. And if anyone questions mirrors blow smoke up their ass and they never get enough evidence to not be drummed out as a “paranoid”. We have a compartmentalization problem. And on those ground facts alone nothing will happen to hillary. She may have had shit in her control that was mkultra 🙂 top secret…..that doesn’ t mean she had any clue. For instance what if sean penn is really on the cia payroll. Few would know. But fox news blabs about him steady. His name and where abouts vlah blah. Sure his ic might be ” thats classified”….well news to fox. Same for hillary. The proof will have to be she knew….xyz was classified but hosted it on her server anyway. We cant presume….when even the ig didnt know some squrril stuf was classified that she would. But if she did. Then proceed like she did. Of course she’s got total cover. Cuz we’ll never know what she was briefed in private. That career servant has already been promoted….punchung his next box. Go with option one.
I agree Karen. We just might have our first President that is disqualified from having access to classified information unsupervised. ; (