And yet, the politically savvy Hillary Clinton wasnt even smart enough to do everything by the book even if only to avoid the appearance of impropriety. Her idiotic, self-serving behavior will now cost us taxpayers millions more for all the hearings and investigations and lawsuits. And we’re supposed to just be OK with this because Powell used a personal email account but not a questionably secured private server in his own home, or because well Bush deleted emails too so nanny nanny boo boo? Really? That’s all the Hillary folks got?
No. I’m sorry, but even if there isn’t a lick of classified information to be found, she made a very stupid call on handling her business outside the rules that govern transparency in the first place. And this is not the only poor decision she’s on record for having made. It shows a pattern of not thinking ahead about the potential consequences of her actions. To me, that is a major disqualification for her to be president of the United States.
Voting to authorize war in Iraq? Awful decision. Legitimate and significant black mark on her decision-making abilities.
Using a private email server for documents not marked classified that maybe should have been so marked (or frankly, for any official purpose at all)? Bad decision. But not even close to being in the realm of disqualifying.
And I think my anti-Hillary credentials are fairly well-established on this board. Pretty sure I’ve started a pit thread on her at least once.
She was one of the officials who determine what is classified. Her saying that it wasn’t “marked” as such is disingenuous, at best, which makes this whole thing a little more than a “bad decision.”
It depends on the content. If there was something that obviously should have been classified as a practical, non-technical matter, then that’s a bigger deal. IMO, we have no idea if that’s the case.
But the mere fact that something technically should have been classified does not move me at all. From time to time in my job, I read redacted classified documents. I can tell you that the current rules for classification are wildly overbroad and subjective. Stuff that is public knowledge is often classified, and two reviewers often disagree with each other about what should be classified.
I’ll keep an open mind if it comes to light that some of the documents really did contain sensitive secrets. But you’re not going to persuade me that sending an email about some innocuous conversation with a foreign diplomat is a terrible judgment call just because technically under the rules it should have been classified.
I’m not an expert on this stuff, but my understanding is that this is not true.
Some things are supposed to be treated as classified even if they have not been officially designated as such. This includes, “foreign government information, other than NATO
information, that is ‘Restricted,’ ‘Designated,’ or ‘unclassified provided in confidence.’” 12 FAM 534.1. So that’s a subset of diplomatic correspondence. And even then, there are exceptions and provisos–just like any other complicated body of law. There is no simple rule that all X must be classified.
It’s an extraordinarily complicated system, which is why they’re doing things like sampling 30 documents and having a team of experts review them. It’s not like looking at red light cameras or something to determine a violation. It’s more like looking at insurance contracts and assessing compliance with state regulations.
Please see the link in post #1098. Is Reuters wrong? How about the former Director of the Information Security Oversight Office? You said you were not an expert, the Director is.
I read that report. Reuters is definitely wrong in some respects (see my cite). And the Director was asked a question we don’t know when he said “it’s born classified.” His later example–something explicitly shared “in confidence”–obviously falls under the rule, though it would still be subject to a number of exceptions. Reuters is wrongly extrapolating from that that any foreign government information is automatically (and obviously) classified.
You’re Hillary Clinton. You’ve spent decades being hounded by investigations into your activities, being accused of subterfuge, irresponsibility, lying, destroying evidence, etc. These investigations cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars even if they mostly go nowhere. You’ve now been appointed to one of the highest levels of government, being put in charge of tens of thousands of communications and the grave responsibility of keeping our intelligence safe. Do you …
A) Set up an email account and run all your correspondence through authorized channels on secure networks controlled by experts at the government, or
B) Get a private server from some mom and pop operation, set it up in your personal residence without telling anybody, then when your job is over, have your staff sort through everything and delete half of it before you leave.
Does someone who chooses B have the common sense G-d have a gnat? Should the person who chooses B be put in charge of the entire freaking government and all of its confidential correspondence? Must we really have to put up with four more years of this crap because she is incapable of behaving in a way that is above reproach?
I’m tired of literally paying for her mistakes. I’m just over it. And I think burdening the United States with her as our leader is utterly irresponsible.
I presume that the motivation for this was precisely the political demonization you identify–namely, to keep some portion of her correspondence private, knowing that many inside and outside of government would happily seize on anything remotely juicy and leak it. That strikes me as bad judgment, but quite common in government, and certainly not lacking “the common sense God gave a gnat.”
Aren’t all diplomatic conversations (short of, where should we go for lunch) presumably shared “in confidence?” It’s hard to see how diplomacy would work, if confidentiality wasn’t the expectation.
No, definitely not. I’m not sure why you think they would be. Diplomatic negotiations, sure. But diplomats do lots of stuff other than negotiating or discussing where to eat lunch.
Because I’m not offering up some speculation about which you might defer to an expert. Whether, for example, there are exceptions to the FGI classification rule is a question of fact. There are. Whether Reuters is right that all FGI is automatically classified is a question of fact. It isn’t.
If you’re not prepared to read my cites and my reasoning for why Reuter’s interpretation of the Director’s quote is wrong, and why the quote itself omits important context, then why did you ask me at all?
We don’t have to presume her motivation; she gave it to us already in all its convoluted glory. All we have to know is that she’s not smart enough to do her personal correspondence from home using a personal email account and her business correspondence from a business email account on secure servers. Most of the rest of the world have multiple email accounts we use for different purposes. If she’s too lazy or too stupid to do something as simple and straightforward as that, then no, she does not have the common sense of a gnat.
And again, she didn’t even stop to consider the ramifications this dumbass move would have on the rest of the country. Now we’re embroiled in yet another costly investigation.
That was not an endorsement of HRC, but a denial of the major premise that present classification systems must be respected. It was something of a pro-Snowden piece subtly mocking HRC for being hoist on the petard of the security state in which she has participated. But it was mostly disparaging that classification system.
Reuters could be wrong, but the State Department didn’t explain why they were wrong. And if I’m an editor, that sounds fishy enough that I’m running with the story.