In another thread there was a passing mention of Clinton apparently claiming that Colin Powell told her to use a private server. Well, the relevant email is now available for public perusal and while Powell doesn’t instruct her to do anything as such (and it wouldn’t matter if he did, since she’s responsible for her own actions), IMHO it doesn’t reflect terribly well on Powell AND it weakens claims that no other SoS deliberately circumvented email security protocols.
Hillary had asked about the use of Blackberrys (her email is at the bottom of the document). Here’s the first part of Powell’s reply:
So… is it just me, or did he admit to using personal email accounts (NOT on a government server and potentially not even on a personal private server) to conduct State Department business?
It continues:
So Powell was told that PDAs weren’t secure, and his response was apparently to stop asking the security services if it was okay to use a PDA and to just use one. Nifty.
And onwards:
I guess that’s…good?
I do like Powell as a person and I can certainly appreciate the frustrations of being heavily restricted in what you can or can’t do or say, especially if as a retired General you’re used to being the guy who tells others what they can or can’t do. But this really doesn’t paint him in the best light.
Not a direct answer to your question, but to pile something else on top: I read somewhere recently where it was pointed out (see how my use of the passive voice obscures the actor?) that anyone who got email from Hillary’s personal account could see very clearly that her email address did NOT end in “.gov.” So why was it such a big surprise that she used private email for business? As we now know, there are thousands of such emails. Apparently no one noticed because IT WAS OF NO CONSEQUENCE and others (probably not just Powell) were in the habit of doing it, too.
In your first quote, Powell says he used his person account to communicate with other officials on their personal accounts. Presumably, that means he used a government account when communicating with them on their government accounts. Not sure that the first instance implies official business was conducted.
He specifically says he used his personal account “to do business with” foreign leaders and Department members. Whether that means “official business” or something else is unclear.
"I even used it to do business with some foreign leaders and some of the senior folks in the Department on their personal email accounts. "
Or it means that all of them also had personal servers, just like the one he himself was using, and that conducting business on their personal servers was SOP, as long as they made a point of keeping it on the DL and carefully deleting all their records, like he was advising Clinton.
At this point I’m half-expecting to find out Powell was using an AOL account.
I should add that I’m assuming this document is genuine; it’s been reported in various media and the site it’s on appears to be a US government one. These days it’s so hard to be sure.
He was, as has been noted before. The latest: “U.S. lawmakers said Thursday they will seek to recover the missing emails of Colin Powell from his time as U.S. secretary of state by going directly to AOL Inc, whose email service he used for his work.”
Both Powell and Clinton are experiencing the results of a government wrestling with a new technology in the years in which it was emerging, and sporadically trying to thrash out guidelines for that technology. But there were no clear rules in the years in which either Powell or Clinton were at State–as proven by the fact mentioned above (that many saw Clinton’s non-‘dotgov’ email address, yet no one put a stop to it).
In 2016 we are all hyper-aware that foreign governments employ battalions of hackers to try to read every communication going to and from top US officials. But a few years back we did not all take that for granted (despite some people’s attempts at revisionist history). Possibly both Powell and Clinton thought that the ‘no, you can’t do that’ functionaries harassing them were just being self-important bureaucrats. Both Powell and Clinton (each with good reputations for being hard workers who got things done) may have believed that their solutions were the wisest in the circumstances.
At any rate, this new information makes it tougher on those trying to push the “Hillary is uniquely awful!” storyline.
Any email from the secretary of state to a foreign leader is government business.
I say no senior government officials should take office until going through a six week computer security class - or maybe attending DEFCON or something.
Sheesh.
Not really. They’re going to keep pushing it, and the public will keep buying – mainly because all conservatives and probably a majority of independents are convinced that Clinton did something sinister with her emails, with Bengazi, and with the Clinton charitable foundation.
Posters on SDMB are curious and want to know the facts of the case. The general public, on the other hand, is confused and largely incurious.
In fact what nobody has talked about is why there are so many undecided voters in the first place. There really should NOT be this many people who are undecided – it should be an open and shut case that Donald Trump would make a horrible president. But apparently to the majority of the electorate right now, it’s actually somehow a fair and serious matter of debate.
I unfortunately have to concede that my predictions of Trump’s collapse in mid-August were once again premature. It is now becoming more and more obvious that all of the conventions that have applied to other races in the past cannot be applied to this one. This is Donald Trump’s race to lose. He may again go out and say something completely over the top like making fun of children with down’s syndrome or something like that, but if he holds it together for the debates, he’ll win the election.
I don’t disagree. When I say this (Powell revelation) will make it tougher on those pushing the anti-Hillary position, I certainly intend no blanket statement of Big Win Now for the Clinton side.
As with all these developments, it’s a matter of chipping away at the edges of the mass of undecided voters. Some of those voters are paying virtually no attention to developments and news, and will vote, if they do vote, according to low-information standards such as ‘with whom do I want to have a beer?’ and the like. But others are paying some degree of attention and will look at the claims that HRC is Uniquely Awful with more skepticism, post-Powell revelations.
It’s never an all-or-nothing Great Development or Terrible Development; it’s about reaching some people here and other people there, while acknowledging that there are potential voters who will never care about the news and/or facts.
:rolleyes: Trump is losing right now. How the hell is “holding it together” going to make him win? Here’s a thought: maybe this prediction is just as good as your mid-August collapse prediction.
You might want to check the polls today and again next week. Trump is not losing. He’s not necessarily winning but he’s not losing, either. The trend lines clearly favor Trump, though. As I had cautioned after his early August collapse, Trump came back from a 10 point poll deficit before and did so within a month. I warned that he might be able to do it again, not necessarily thinking that he would be able to but that he could. As it turns out, he actually did erase a 10-point lead in the polls.
And now we know a little more in early September than we did in early August, which is that a lot of voters who are undecided probably want to vote for Trump. It’s just that Trump repulsed them so badly, as he did in June, when he attacked “civilians”, ordinary folk who wouldn’t normally be shredded by politicians in the media during a campaign.
So that’s why I say that if Trump can continue to stay away from doing things like pissing on the graves of deceased veterans, taunting the parents of gold star families, and claiming that people of Mexican descent shouldn’t be federal judges – if he can avoid getting personal with ordinary people, then he has an advantage that Hillary doesn’t. A majority of people just don’t like Hillary Clinton. Minorities will vote for her, but they are just that – minorities. She can’t really expand that base too much. She now has to get whites to vote for her, and she’s finding that to be a real challenge.
I think that Trump has made it close indeed, but the latest from Rassmusen is showing that Clinton is up by 4. As 538 does, one has to assume a Republican bias of 2 on that one making that a poll that has hillary up by 6. Other recent polls are showing a slight increase by Clinton.
Still Trump is close but I do think that Trump will have the hardest time with moderates and undecideds.
I would just like to point out that Colin Powell’s statements cannot be trusted as he has clearly lied about what he told Hillary. Last week he gave an interview where he said this:
However, I note that Hillary’s email that he responded to was dated 1/23/09, 3 DAYS AFTER OBAMA TOOK OFFICE! Either Colin Powell flat-out lied, or he took a year to respond to that e-mail,
I am not at all sure that the actual Colin Powell lives up to his vaunted reputation. He disgraced himself before the UN, deadly bullshit, the kind of bullshit that gets innocent people killed. If man of integrity equals duck, he walks like one, quacks like one, but swims like a bowling ball.
A man 3.8% behind in the aggregate, $200 million behind in the money machine, with no ground game, behind in all battleground polls with the possible exception of Iowa(!), with a 71% chance of winning according to 538 (76% nowcast, 69% polls plus), was ahead for four whole days in July according to the same nowcast, has no institutional support, has no fewer than two Republicans running against him (Libertarian guy, Evan), has half the GOP wishing for his defeat and 5% of them actively working against him, has affronted/insulted women, Catholics, Muslims, African-Americans, Hispanics, and any voter who isn’t white…