LonghornDave:
My god, how can you possibly equate these? Rice herself never used (sent or received) email. Of her staff, there were a total of 10 emails that were retroactively classified. Powell had 2 emails that he received that were retroactively classified.
You want to equate that to literally thousands of emails that were sent or received by Clinton and her staff. You’re equating actions that ranged from never to rare under Powell and Rice to exclusive and daily under Clinton. It’s just pure insanity.
Are you really comparing the same thing. You are referring to retroactive classification of emails to “literally thousands of emails that were sent or received by Clinton and her staff” without telling us how many of those were retroactively classified.
And are 10 and 2 really the grand totals?
From CNN in February:
The emails were discovered during a State Department review of the email practices of the past five secretaries of state. It found that Powell received two emails that were classified and that the “immediate staff” working for Rice received 10 emails that were classified.
The information was deemed either “secret” or “confidential,” according to the report.
“Based on the department’s responses and findings to date, additional potential classified material and/or highly sensitive information not intended for distribution may reside in the Department’s unclassified paper and electronic archives associated with Secretaries Powell and Rice and their respective st aff,” a memo about the report said.
(Emphasis added).
And how significant is this revelation of “retroactive classification” anyway?
In all the cases, however – as well as Clinton’s – the information was not marked “classified” at the time the emails were sent, according to State Department investigators.
Powell noted that point in a statement on Thursday.
“The State Department cannot now say they were classified then because they weren’t,” Powell said. “If the Department wishes to say a dozen years later they should have been classified that is an opinion of the Department that I do not share.”
“I have reviewed the messages and I do not see what makes them classified,” Powell said.
So retroactive classification of emails is a touchy subject. Still, do we have anything telling us whether Clinton’s were classified at the time they were sent and received or whether they were retroactive?
Look at this from a few days ago:
Emails released Friday by the State Department appear to confirm Hillary Clinton’s assertion that she received no classified information on her personal email account while she served as secretary of state. Still, some of the emails were classified at the FBI’s request after the fact — something the White House says is not uncommon.
Hmm…is this whole classification thing kind of murky? What does this Politifact article say?
Agencies regularly disagree about whether information should be classified, even arguing over lines within the same document, said Thomas Blanton, director of the National Security Archive. If the intelligence community declares something classified from its perspective, that does not automatically trump the State Department’s own decision that the same piece of information is not classified…
However, if information came solely from the CIA, and it ended up in Clinton’s email without the proper classification marking, that could be problematic, said Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists…
Ultimately, both Blanton and Aftergood said the memos tell us much more about the turf war between State and the intelligence community than they do about how Clinton handled her emails.
“What leaps out at me is how dysfunctional our classification system has become, where you have different agencies and different offices arguing over the mere existence of classified information,” Aftergood said. “What does it say about Secretary Clinton? It doesn’t say anything about deliberate or negligent mishandling of classified information.”
Blanton said, “The intelligence community is trying to override State Department determination. … It doesn’t say anything about Mrs. Clinton’s own activities.”
Sorry, but I don’t think we aren’t at scandal level just yet…