Hillary’s E-Mails…
Seldom has a topic so technical gotten more discussion or generated more passion than the subject of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private e-mail server while secretary of state by people with no understanding of the issues involved but certainty of their position. Among my many friends who support her the subject engenders dismissiveness. They repeat the latest dismissal of the candidate almost verbatim. No big deal.
Among my friends who understand the issues there is nonchalance that it is a near certainty that hostile state parties (Russia, Iran, North Korea, China) and other state parties (Israel, France,…) and non-state parties read all of her e-mails while she was secretary of state. Of course. If they didn’t, some people have been severely punished. Hacking a server as she had is relatively child’s play. And hackers view any unprotected server as an invitation. That there are no traces of intrusion is meaningless. No good hacker would leave any.
Not for a millisecond do I believe she intended this. I am sure she did not. She is clearly a patriot. The systems at the Department of State have a long-standing reputation for being poor. Her staff apparently asked the National Security Agency for the same secure mobile device solution they provided to the President, but the agency declined (and I don’t blame them since executive IT support is a thankless and distracting role). Finally, in responding to FOIA inquiries, State only has the option to classify sensitive information other agencies can withhold, so they classify more during the release review.
Unfortunately for her, it is quite possible that those e-mails she had her attorneys destroy will reappear. Kim Dotcomm already has promised this. Julian Assange has hinted the same. The only real question is when. As I said above, it seems highly probable someone has them, though deciding to disclose them is a different decision. Maybe even the NSA. If they do come out, we will be, as MSM likes to say, in uncharted waters.
To me the e-mail issue is a big deal. It clearly was intended to avoid the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act, though that cannot be proven and though not necessarily with evil intent. We know she values her privacy above almost all else. Once the world found out about her practice, she voluntarily asked her attorneys to identify and turn over those relating to official business — -and destroy the rest. She did not do so on leaving office (which she apparently is required to do), and if it had not been for the Benghazi hearings, she probably never would have done so.
The attorneys used standard search software to identify those which should be turned over and did so. While she testified (and may have believed) they read the e-mails, they did not. 64,000 is a lot of emails. As a result, errors were made, and the FBI found close to 200 emails that were not surrended in other State email accounts. To claim transparency when you screen what is released is a stretch. Had she sent the same e-mails using a government system all of them would have been subject to release.
She did send and/or receive three e-mail threads that contained classified information, marked as confidential, even though the e-mail itself was not marked classified. While in the scheme of things, this is minor, classified is classified, and the law makes no distinction between levels in providing protection. At minimum, this could cause loss of security clearance and potentially employment, as the FBI director said.
There is a related issue. She had an affirmative obligation to mark as classified any of her emails she created that should have been classified. We do not know whether the retroactive classification by the Department was because of later knowledge or her error in not classifying at the time of sending. Stressing “marked classified” is an erroneous excuse, as anyone who has ever had a clearance understands. Her obligation was to mark it classified if it was. Almost any missive from the Secretary of State is potentially classified.
People in the government live with the complexity of having a high side (classified) and a low side (unclassified) on their computers and have to switch between them all the time. She does not like keyboards and did not want a computer on her desk. She loved her Blackberry which does not have a high side and a low side. She had access to a SCIF at her home, so she could have used a classified network there. But there was no way a Blackberry alone could have met her customer needs.
She points out that her predecessors did the same thing. They did not. Her two immediate predecessors did use their personal e-mail at times, and after she did so, they released what they had to the State Department, which retroactively did classify one and two e-mails. However, both used commercial e-mail services with tight security and primarily relied on their state.gov e-mail account to do business. Neither conducted their official business using their personal e-mail, and it is wrong, as Tim Kaine claimed the other day, to say she only did what her predecessors had done. In any case, she knew what they did only after the fact.
The official government staff responsible for her IT support were not consulted on the arrangements. The person who did it all for her was given a government appointment as a political appointee and was paid additional funds privately by her. The conflict of interest is obvious. He was not supervised in any sense by the Department. This was a rogue operation if there ever was one. No one would have recommended or permitted this arrangement, which is why, I am sure, the Department staff were not consulted. He has taken the Fifth Amendment in his testimony in the on-going Judicial Watch lawsuit on advice of his attorneys; he talked to the FBI only when given immunity.
She said the server was in a location protected by the Secret Service, but we now know it was eventually moved to a hosting center in New Jersey, where its physical security was up to the hosting center. Obscurity is a common form of security, and perhaps no one knew how important that server was, but it was clearly not a secure location.
What she did was wrong, very wrong. But she has so clouded the issue by generating chaff that it is not apparent. She is a master of spin. Indeed, John McLaughlin, a generally conservative TV commentator, just suggested that she was better off using her own server for security reasons than a government server. To her credit, she has never claimed that her system was going to be more secure than a State Department system. The staffing and equipment used show security was not a priority.
She is a lawyer and when asked a question she makes the minimum disclosure possible consistent with known facts. That is her training, and here it has caused all the problems. Had she said something like the following there would be no issue:
“I knew I could be most productive in my role if I could send and receive e-mails from a mobile device. My staff gave me that by utilizing a private server used by my husband. While I realized then and recognize now that it was not a classified system, in the ongoing flow of work some e-mails inadvertently may have contained classified information, even though I made every effort to avoid that. I also now realize that hostile parties could have compromised that e-mail especially when I was overseas. On leaving office, I immediately should have given the official e-mails to the State Department and allowed the Department with my attorneys to decide which e-mails were official. I regret these errors.”
That is not Hillary Clinton, unfortunately. She cannot say this without admitting that she violated the law, and she just will not do that. What would a grand jury decide? We will never know, because the Justice Department chose not to ask. I think that was a major error on their part. Had they taken the case to a Grand Jury we would have had a decision in accordance with the Constitution. Instead, we have an administrative decision from a government headed by someone who declares her the best qualified and trustworthy candidate. And an attorney general whom Hillary has said she might keep in that role. I suspect the Grand Jury would not have returned an indictment, by the way, but that was the proper forum to decide. I did find it interesting that neither the director of the FBI nor the attorney general even mentioned a grand jury as part of the process.
I am writing this because I want to be able to vote for her in November. She is clearly well-qualified, and on many positions, though not all, I agree with her. But, to use current terminology, I am not there yet. Her critical flaw is that she seems surrounded by acolytes who cannot tell her that she is wrong. Whatever she wants she demands. That is a very dangerous trait in a president. Our best presidents have openly tolerated and even encouraged dissent among their staffs to be sure they got the truth. Diversity matters.
