But you’re seizing on the case that I specifically said was not the issue.
What I’m thinking of is like where Clinton sends something to her Assistant SoS along the lines of “I spoke to President Obama and we’ve agreed that we will arm the Ukrainians if the conflict continues for another 2 months”. That’s not something that is going to be classified at the time - she is not going to be seeking a classification review before sending that email. But meanwhile, it could tick off the Russians if they found out, or could embolden the Ukrainians to prolong the conflict if they did. If someone was later doing some sort of FOIA request for Clinton emails a decision would have to be made as to whether it’s secret or not. But the fact that it wasn’t officially classified as secret at the time it was sent is just due to the nature of the process, and is not a legitimate defense.
Ah, if you’re talking about information that originated from Clinton herself, then she would know better than to send anything like that over an unclassified network to begin with. It’s been reported that state department officials are given a classified guide book that says things like, “Information regarding arming of Ukranian militants is [typically] SECRET/NOFORN.” Bandying about information in that category on a classified network with unclassified headers might be fine, but it would represent poor judgement to use an unclassified network, and extremely poor judgement to use a private server, although there’s not much difference between the two.
Now it may be that Clinton carefully considered those sorts of emails and decided that the unclassified network was fine, and then another agency did a review and came to a different conclusion. And it could be that they’re both “right,” as it were – the other agency might have concerns that the state department didn’t or couldn’t have known about. But we really don’t know what time of information it was. Generally, I think the classified angle is overplayed, but that doesn’t really excuse the hubris of running a private server.
You’re asserting that Clinton “would know better than to send anything like that over an unclassified network to begin with”, and that at most she “carefully considered those sorts of emails and decided that the unclassified network was fine, and then another agency did a review and came to a different conclusion”. But that’s exactly what’s in question at this time.
And my point here is that the evidence relevant to this question is whether the information was of the sort that would have been classified at the time, not whether it actually was - because it wouldn’t have been classified at that time in any event due to the nature of the process.
You saying that you personally don’t believe Clinton would have done something of the sort does not add anything in this regard.
Sorry, that should have been a “should” and not a “would.” She may have fucked up, or it may be all a bunch of hooey. Without knowing what the supposedly classified information is, it’s impossible to say. But she’s not automatically absolved of any wrongdoing for the reason you believe, is my point. It very well could have been classified at the time and she just didn’t realize it, or didn’t care.
Here you are making an unsupported assumption about the nature of the emails that “contain classified information,” relying heavily on the implication that if it is “classified” it must be information that presents a danger to US interests if hacked or otherwise revealed.
The fact that you have to resort to insults says a great deal about the weakness of your position. Enough information about the emails has been released so that opponents of Clinton should be able to dispense with guessing games about what Clinton might, hypothetically, have revealed (the Chinese premiere’s farts? really?) and pivot to actual, supportable facts.
Tempest in a teacup, for the most part. I’ve mentioned in the past that I worked for Diplomatic Security for some years during the last of the Cold War. Part of our job was to try to make sure that people were observing correct protocol both in what they did and in what they said. I can’t begin to tell you how many ambassadors we told about security issues right in their own office suites, only to be told to basically mind our own business. These sorts of breaches ranged from having a personal television or radio (which oscillate) sitting next to the computer terminal, to having classified discussions in their offices, where the Euro phones were telephonic on hook (which means that anybody downstream could clip onto the line and hear everything going on in the office, even when the phone was hung up).
The worst that will happen to someone doing these things would be loss of security clearance, and then only if a serious information leak was traced back to that particular person. Nobody is really willing to fuck with a Senior Foreign Service Officer over something like this. That doesn’t make it right or even advisable to ignore warnings, but there are no teeth behind the regs. It’s like a cop trying to enforce a jay-walking charge against the chief of police. If Clinton sent sensitive info in email form, I’m fairly confident that it didn’t rise to the level of breaching national security.
I’ll add that in my experience in the Navy, both active duty and civilian, emailing classified information (or otherwise mishandling it) is incredibly common, and except in circumstances in which information was sold for profit or released for ideological (i.e. traitorous) reasons, it was never prosecuted. People were disciplined, certainly, but this was usually in the form of temporary loss of clearance and re-training, and that’s about it.
It is sort of bizarre to frame your rebuttal as being against people trying to undercut Clinton’s candidacy, given that I am the OP and I plan to vote for her.
And the substance of your argument doesn’t fare much better. Yes, it’s true, that we haven’t been shown everything considered classified that was discovered on her server (for obvious reasons). It does not follow that the case against her is pure speculation. It rests on the entirely reasonable inference–though apparently denied by some in this thread–that since she used her Blackberry almost exclusively then some of the many sensitive electronic documents that would have crossed her eyeballs ended up the server.
There is, of course, reasonable debate to be had about how much sensitive information a Secretary of State has access to. And if you’re persuaded by Martin Hyde’s assertions that the government has very few real secrets worth keeping, then it’s obvious what side of that you’ll come out on.
I think the relevance is solely to the ease of proving a criminal charge against her. If a document is marked classified, there is no need to further prove that she should have understood it to be classified.
There are two separate issues. The first is the way Clinton dealt with handling classified information on her personal server that was not secure.
The second issue is the actual information that crossed her server.
The problem I have is with the first issue and second issue is trivial. The reason is simple. Clinton, as SecState, should have known that she would get email on her work email that was classified and that, at least some of that classified information would be damaging to the U.S. if her server was hacked.
Yet she used a personal, insecure server anyway because carrying multiple devices was too hard. Or something.
This really is nothing but speculation, you know. This board is no stranger to tortured lines of reasoning springing from hypotheses about What Must Be, certainly. We’ve all waded into such threads from time to time. But why are you using this style of argument? Enough has been published about specific emails that you could form your argument by at least beginning from them, heavily redacted though they might be.
All you have posted, so far, is tut-tutting about how she MUST have posted “sensitive” information, and more tut-tutting about her failure to be obedient enough. It’s thin soup.
Nah. What you call speculation when it suits you is the same thing you’d call inference in another context.
The difference between abject speculation and reasonable inference is the distance of the leap. It is a short leap from what we know to the inference that Clinton reviewed and sent sensitive documents.
The thin soup is assuming that all of the classified documents are actually non-sensitive. How is it reasonable for you to make that assumption? Over-classification is real. It doesn’t follow that nothing classified is sensitive.
I’m not claiming to have factual evidence that Clinton never emailed something “sensitive” enough to matter.
I am saying that it is pointless to argue that Clinton has committed disqualifying acts on the basis of inference. For a respectable argument, you need a foundation composed of facts.
It is, however, reasonable to assume that the SecState (in this case, somebody who was in the US Senate and served on the Armed Services Committee) would be smart enough to know what could be sent via email, and what could not. As you point out, all manner of silly shit is sent as classified/noforn, including such mundane stuff as “Ambassador Smith has departed post on vacation.” Is it classified? Yes, because some knucklehead put “CLASSIFIED” at the top of the cable, not because it’s actually detrimental to national security. I, for one, trust that she exercised due caution and discretion when emailing.
As much fun as it would be to delve into the epistemology by which you separate fact from inference, I think that’s a thread about Hilary Putnam, not Hillary Clinton.
In the real world, you rely on inferences all the time in all your arguments, even the respectable ones.
Is that trust tested at all when you learn that she was specifically advised that continuing to do this posed security risks, she agreed, and she continued to do so anyway?
Not at all. As I said, I’ve had a lot of experience with people doing the same sorts of things. We specifically advised ambassadors that what they were doing was a security risk because it was our job to do so: err on the side of caution. They could choose to follow our advice or not, and there were no repercussions. I’m as sure that all of them knew the limits that they could go to, just like the SecState knows those same limits, and exercised due caution.
Republicans have been throwing shit at Hillary Clinton for more than two decades now. Including a time when Republicans had the executive office and all of congress.
If she so much as jay-walked, they would ensure that there was a hefty fine and media coverage of her blatant disregard of intersections.
And how about Benghazi? Spent millions of tax-payer dollars and a ton of investigations in what was a transparent attempt to get that to stick to her as well.
Until I see a mug shot and hear about charges being filed, it’s safe to assume that nothing will come from anything.
I’ll just wait over here for that to happen. Any day now.
If Comey recommends an indictment, then that’s just as good as charges actually being filed. I’m sure we all know that Obama’s Justice Department will not actually file charges. But if Comey recommends charges, then it’s as if they were actually filed, since Comey is non political.
I’d also note that the deception is on both sides. The investigation is in fact a criminal investigation, and the liberal argument that “Clinton is not a target” is about as relevant as the “marked classified” talking point. Criminal investigations don’t always have targets until they are complete. But there is in fact a criminal investigation around the email issue, and it’s not merely an “intelligence review” or whatever BS Clinton’s supporters are trying to feed us.