UberArchitype - but here’s a few points you’re glossing over:
Clinton generally claims that the classified information in her emails was retroactively classified. It is very possible that she is correct. If she has a conversation with, say, the Saudi Foriegn Minister, and emails a State Department official to look into the matters the FM raised, it is totally plausible that the conversation between Clinton and the FM was not classified at all - therefore neither was the email. It is possible that the information is later classified, which is possible. So it could be that Clinton did nothing wrong (other than poor judgment in not using a government email address), but she is being accused of mishandling classified information, possibly with no basis for the charge.
It is possible for someone to write an email about something in the news - let’s say one of Snowden’s leaks, and most people would find the email contents totally ordinary, since they’ve read the exact same things in the Guardian or something. But the rules say that even if something is in the press, it may still be classified. If this happened, Clinton did something wrong, but I doubt anyone but the folks who still believe Benghazi is a huge scandal would think this is a big deal.
It’s possible that Clinton just simply wrote emails she shouldn’t have, either through ignorance (“Huh? Why would THAT be classified?”) or just plain poor judgment (like Petraeus’s scandal).
As I said before, surely some investigators know, but they probably can’t tell us at this point how big a deal this is.
What’s clear to me is that Clinton still hasn’t gotten ahead of this. The claims that there are Republican hyper partisans out to get her is factually true. But that doesn’t answer the questions of what information was on her email system and why it was there. Blaming this all on a right wing conspiracy - which again, does indeed exist - just rings hollow when it is a couple government inspector generals who are doing the legwork here.
SCI/TK is not retroactively classified. I won’t speculate on exactly what we are dealing with here, but I don’t doubt it would be safe to assume from the circumstantial evidence we know about so far, that a variety of classified content covering a period of years has been compromised.
Lots of things are “possible.” As I said in the other thread, I don’t doubt Hillary was an unwitting participant in this fiasco. That doesn’t change the facts, one of which is, she was at the very least, unwitting, to put it nicely.
^^^^^ There’s lots of characterizations for “poor judgement,” as well. I’d be willing to bet she was totally blindsided by it.
Republicans getting a hold of this is a byproduct of what actually happened - for real, as in real data compromised in a literally unprecedented fashion in terms of systems and personnel security. Politicians have demonstrated a plethora of ways tof self-destruct. This is a groundbreaker. I never liked the Clintons, but might even feel sorry for Hillary by the time it’s all said and done.
This whole thing reminds me of how the whitewater investigation led to Monica Lewinsky. Its not germane to the original investigation but if you are looking to burn the witch, you will pick at any excuse you can find along the way.
As usual, I find the real scandal to be what’s legal. Shady business deals? Planning to overthrow other country’s governments? Politics as usual. Improperly storing correspondence of said plans? An outrage! An affront to civilization itself! What was she thinking?
Remember when everyone hated Dubya because he deleted subpoenaed e-mails and Cheney hid everything in a man sized safe in Mordor? Pepperidge farm remembers.
Somebody in the other thread said that. Just parroting, haven’t verified…
On what? Hillary’s role? I commented on that numerous times in the other thread. There’s a hierarchy of implications there ranging from just being a dumb-ass on the low end, which has already been demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt, to high treason on the other. What’s your point in asking that question?
If I didn’t find the idea of her being POTUS so revolting after this, I’d be L’ngMAO imagining the different conference rooms around D.C full of high-ranking security wonks, with dutifully frightened subordinates and superiors scratching their heads discussing how to handle “it” in the context of “her.”
Actually, with the difference in the email setup, what Colin and Condy did *is * fundamentally different that what Clinton did.
Colin and Condy used commercial services that a) have dedicated security teams (I worked at AOL in the network operations center for a bit and worked closely with the AOL security folks) b) do regular backups and c) will not decide which emails are relevant to a subpoena. AOL will, assuming that the subpoena is valid, just give the information to the proper authority.
So what determines if an email should be classified? Recipient? Subject? Key words? Alerts similar to what’s used to find terrorists?
Was she not supposed to have access to a private email server in the first place? Isn’t there some regulation that requires private email servers to be secure? Was nobody screening her emails? Did she switch because got tired of having to retype her credentials even when she checked the box “Remember my credentials?” Did she use gmail instead of Outlook? Did she accidentally click the AVG link that switches her search engine?
And no, there is nothing that can be done to a private email server to make it secure for the purposes of transmitting classified information. That’s because any email service will transmit over the Internet, whereas classified information travels on networks that cannot be accessed from the Internet.
Since Hillary Clinton did not use her official government account, and is claiming that none of her e-mails contained any classified information, I think she is expecting us to believe that throughout her entire tenue as Secretary of State, no one sent her one single e-mail that contained any classified information, and she did not send one single e-mail to anyone else that contained classified information.
Let’s get this straight: even if she used a government email address – let’s say “hillary@state.gov” – classified information would not have been allowed on that system.
I think it’s pretty clear that she is not tech savvy and has never used Outlook. Wasn’t there a story about her chief of staff writing an email to the State Department’s IT guy saying something like, “Look, uh, I don’t know how to say this, but, uh, she doesn’t know how to use a computer. Blackberry, yes, but not a computer.”
So I think that was the main reason… but was she trying to avoid FOIA? I’m not sure. If somebody told her that she could avoid FOIA by using a private email address, that’s pretty damn bad advice. After all, if she sent an email to any other government official, her email would be captured on government servers anyway. Had she been using a private email system to send emails to other officials on their own private email addresses… that would be very suspicious. But sending emails from a .com email address to .gov? That’s, like, the opposite of sneaky.
Condoleezza Rice didn’t use email at all so I assume Hillary used similar formats as Rice did for secret matters. Not to say Hillary didn’t commit errors but obviously email wasn’t the only option.
Of course she was sending emails that weren’t to .gov accounts. TOns of the emails that have been released to date were to non .gov accounts. Her deputy chief of staff, Huma Abedin, was also using a Clinton email account and one of her closest advisors, Sidney Blumenthal is a private citizen for just a couple of examples.
Possibly, but when I read through this chronology of events it seems that it is more of an archiving issue than potential mishandling of confidential information issue.
