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More on Clinton’s Emails
Via the WSJ:
At the center of a criminal probe involving Hillary Clinton’s handling of classified information is a series of emails between American diplomats in Islamabad and their superiors in Washington about whether to oppose specific drone strikes in Pakistan. The 2011 and 2012 emails were sent via the “low side’’—government slang for a computer system for unclassified matters—as part of a secret arrangement that gave the State Department more of a voice in whether a Central Intelligence Agency drone strike went ahead, according to congressional and law-enforcement officials briefed on the Federal Bureau of Investigation probe. Some of the emails were then forwarded by Mrs. Clinton’s aides to her personal email account, which routed them to a server she kept at her home in suburban New York when she was secretary of state, the officials said. Investigators have raised concerns that Mrs. Clinton’s personal server was less secure than State Department systems.
More:
Published in GeneralState Department officials told FBI investigators they communicated via the less-secure system on a few instances, according to congressional and law-enforcement officials. It happened when decisions about imminent strikes had to be relayed fast and the U.S. diplomats in Pakistan or Washington didn’t have ready access to a more-secure system, either because it was night or they were traveling.
Emails sent over the low side sometimes were informal discussions that occurred in addition to more-formal notifications through secure communications, the officials said.
One such exchange came just before Christmas in 2011, when the U.S. ambassador sent a short, cryptic note to his boss indicating a drone strike was planned. That sparked a back-and-forth among Mrs. Clinton’s senior advisers over the next few days, in which it was clear they were having the discussions in part because people were away from their offices for the holiday and didn’t have access to a classified computer, officials said.
They get paid enough to go to their offices on days adjacent to holidays if necessary for national security.
They can also VPN into the secure network. Every company in America has access to this secure technology as should the State Department. No excuse for not using a secure link.
No excuse for people not being in jail either. It’s outrageous.
Bummer, a crisis happens over the holidays and you might have to go into work to use secure computers and communication channels. Or you can just stay home and compromise national security to save yourself the trip.
Tough call. But that’s why we pay these people: to make those tough calls.
The MSM is building the ‘everybody did it’ defense for Hillary. If lots of people in town get away with speeding and fender-benders why should she be charged for driving a semi at high speed into a kindergarten.
I happen to work on NIPR and SIPR (along with millions of others). I can’t imagine anyone being stupid enough to discuss drone strike details on NIPR. I know that I’d be fired immediately.
And the justification for this is … convenience?
If you wouldn’t put your bank account number on NIPR, why would you put drone strike information on it?
Would it be possible to say this in a more mealy-mouthed way? I guess this is what passes for the ‘objective voice’ in ‘journalism’.
EDs,
This is what the whole story is all about. Clinton wanted more political control over National Security so she could manipulate it for personal gain of either political or financial type.
She recklessly endangered the real needs of National Security by exposing the most sensitive information to easy hacks of her personal server. This is the description of a person that never should have been a Senator of the United States, never should have been a Secretary of State, and most certainly never should be allowed near the Presidency.
That this country can’t afford to allow Hillary Clinton access to power is a proven fact. Comey must recommend indictment. Lynch must indict.
Regards,
Jim
Of course the very best call would have been for the State employees to just stay at home and not write any e-mails at all.
Does anyone think the Clinton State Department interfering in CIA drone strikes actually made those drone strikes more effective?
I’m hoping that won’t work in this case, for precisely this reason:
Several years ago, the Washington Post came out with a huge “shocking expose” about how many Americans work with classified material.
It was supposed to cause an outrage over how big the “spy state” had become, but failed. However, one of its main points stands: there are millions of Americans who have or have had to work with sensitive government material, and they know how strict the rules are.
The press can try to paint a picture of “everybody does it that way”, but if there are enough everybodies in society at large, even the press might not be able to run interference on this one.
As Her Awesome Mightiness would put it:
Seawriter
What also bothers me is the excuse that “Clinton is only doing what previous secretaries have done.”
Before Clinton took over, they changed the internet security practices for a reason. The past practices had been proven to be unsecure, and that’s why they changed them. You can’t come in after the change and say you’re just doing what others have done, because it means you’re deliberately ignoring the fact that those practices were proved unsecure.
That excuse should be a shibboleth: anyone who offers it should instantly be treated as a sycophantic fool.
The FBI has slow walked its investigation to the point where it’s no longer practicable for it to issue a report or refer for indictment.
Odds are virtually nil that Clinton or any of her inner circle will ever suffer any meaningful consequence for this scandal.
I hope I’m wrong.
I fear you’re right. Even if the FBI did try to indict, the timing would give Clinton an excuse to deflect the actual particulars of the case by crowing about how this was another political assassination attempt on her.
Frankly, the only way I see this hurting Clinton is if/when somebody with the hacked emails starts releasing them with perfect timing – i.e., she makes a bold claim about not sending emails on topic X through her server, and the next day Wikileaks releases an email with her name on it on exactly that topic.
I’m not so sure. It may have been more about preventing Valerie J and friends from looking over her shoulder. Then either she wasn’t smart enough to realize she was getting the Russians and the Chinese instead or she actually feared the White House more than the Russians and the Chinese.
I suppose reporting on this topic is important both for historical reasons and to bring to light practices that should be prohibited in the future.
But it has no relevance from a judicial or political perspective. Ms. Rodham is not going to be indicted, and her supporters are not going to forsake her as a result of these revelations.
For some reason, a large proportion of Americans have decided that Rodham and her husband are American royalty and that they can do no wrong. It’s quite disgusting, actually.
Isreal,
Does any of this matter? You are describing someone who should not have been the Secretary of State. She should not be allowed anywhere near power. The crimes she committed are as clear as day. She must not be allowed to proceed unchecked.
Regards,
Jim
Didn’t WikiLeaks threaten a couple of days ago to release emails of hers?
Two questions:
Is there any doubt that she is guilty?
Is there any doubt that she will face little to no consequences for her actions?
Bloomberg News is reporting claims that the Clinton Foundation’s servers have also been breached (apparently from Russia):
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-21/clinton-foundation-said-to-be-breached-by-russian-hackers
Tenacious,
Oh just perfect. They knew everything she and Bubba were up to. Well, it takes a Kleptocrat to know a Kleptocrat.
Regards,
Jim
It’s also a slander directed at a large population, implying that some of them would not have any such concerns.
Ret & gen,
Rewrite by someone who has their head screwed on facing forward.
“Investigators have raised concerns that Mrs. Clinton was storing the most highly classified State Department documents on her completely unsecured and unauthorized home server.”
Regards,
Jim
The problem is that Clinton’s supporters don’t care. To Clinton supporters any Democrat in the White House is better than any Republican.