What happened with the Hillary email scandal?

Politics & Elections
221

Did they create a new email just as they got the job, or did they just prefer to use the email they already had? That’s a key difference when you’re looking at motivations. One is more convenient. The other is less convenient. So in the case of someone setting up a new system for personal email, convenience is definitely not the motivation. Just receiving a .gov address is easier in that case.

You also have to wonder why the State Department didn’t hand over her private email when the first FOIA requests were made years ago. We still don’t know why they hid that.

222

I doubt it was just about convenience – it was about control… Clinton (pretty wisely, it seems to me) wanted to control her emails, and it was legal. Since it was legal, and comparable to the common practice of previous SoS’s, then why wouldn’t she do it?

223

There is nothing secure about an unclassified state department email server, and the emails sent to/from it go out unencrypted over the internet just like your Yahoo! emails, especially during the time period in question when PKI wasn’t even implemented in the state department.

It’s the equivalent of leaving your documents in your unlocked car in the parking lot, and leaving your documents in an unlocked government-owned-vehicle in the parking lot. If people were leaving documents in Hillary’s unlocked government vehicle, documents that someone later decided should have been locked in a safe, is that somehow better to you than if they’d been in her personal Camry?

224

She has control with a government account. I have control over my work email. What I don’t have control over is retention of emails. And neither does she, even though she used personal email.

And again, how come this wasn’t revealed as soon as the FOIA requests came in? We shouldn’t be seeing these emails now, we should have seen them years ago.

And one thing Powell and Rice didn’t have was the ability to delete 30,000 emails. But I’m sure her lawyer was careful to only delete truly personal emails.

225

Well, it could be that control begets convenience; the State Department email would have required her to use a State Department Blackberry, which she wouldn’t be able to use for personal/other business. By setting up her own email server, she could have used 1 Blackberry for all her email addresses. It seems like a pretty compelling selling point, coming from someone who’s had 2 phones and absolutely hated it.

In fact, isn’t that exactly why she said she did it? I think it really is that simple.

226

EVeryone else in the real world uses two in her situation. She really does think she should have privileges the rest of us don’t. She even had the gall to be upset about her underlings using personal email. If it’s allowed, what’s she bitching about?

227

Powell used a personal account which has now closed, taking with it thousands of pages of documents. But he had the same power to “delete 30,000 emails” as Clinton did.

Rice and Albright barely used email so didn’t have 30,000 emails to delete.

And the first SoS to primarily use a government email account for work is the present one, John Kerry.

But I’m sure you were careful to ignore those salient points when making your case.

228

You mean a SoS and someone who wants to be President thinks she might have special privileges? Egads! Alert the media!

229

And everyone else in the real world hates it, and wouldn’t do it if they, say, had access to a professional grade private email server and a precedent for using it.

I’ll have to grant that there’s a difference between being an appointed cabinet member and a career civil servant. Other secretaries apparently acted the same way. I’m not a fan of Hillary, I’m just trying to be impartial here, and I see no reason not to take her rational at face value.

Dodging FOIA requests doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, but I’ve only had to respond to a few of them so maybe I’m not smart enough on this. The existance of any emails or documents that satisfy the FOIA request and are releasable is all self-reported anyway, so running a search on a private server and not returning any emails because you want to keep secrets doesn’t seem all that different to me from running a search on a gov’t server and not returning any emails because you want to keep secrets.

230

I had no further point. Collin Powell fucked it up and he seems competent.

The paper this morning says one of the emails discussed a kidnapping in the Philippines and another general views on the Middle East. Both were from ambassadors and were forwarded to Powell. Both are now considered confidential

A quote from the paper this morning:

[QUOTE=Powell]
This is an absurdity. If two seasoned diplomats could not discuss their views with the Secretary in unclassified emails, we might as well shut the department down.
[/quote]

231

Are all SoS meetings, phone calls and in-person conversations recorded and subject to FOIA requests? If not, why should I give a shit about email?

232

Emails leave a trail, so they should be subject to FOIA requests. Emails are often done to get something “on the record”, unlike a quick phone call. It’s silly to claim that because phone calls aren’t recorded we should ignore things that ARE recorded. If that were reasonable you could say the same about paper documents.

233

It also doesn’t really matter if Blank Slate personally cares about emails, providing them is required by the FOIA legislation and everyone else is subject to the same law. adaher does have a point that the SoS shouldn’t be above the law, so if everyone else needs to search through their email to respond to a FOIA request, so should they.

That said, the law makes no demands about where the emails are stored, and makes no distinction between private/gov’t servers. Furthermore, as I understand it, DoS policy didn’t prohibit personal emails at the time either. But let’s not throw out all of FOIA just because in this one case it seems a bit silly.

234

Think about this for a moment.

This wasn’t ‘Hey, I prefer to use my Yahoo account. Send me stuff there.’

This was ‘Hey, I want to use my own email. So I need to buy a server, hire someone to configure the server, arrange to have an internet connection pulled to my server, register the domain, set up the MX records, set up webmail and also have them maintain it. And oh, there is a non-trivial cost to doing this’.

If the issue was really just having one device, why go through that kind of trouble? Since there are tons of free email services that would accomplish the same thing one suspects that the real reason for the personal server set up isn’t the one that Clinton claimed.

Regarding this:

There are those who believe that elected officials deserve special privileges. There are those who believe that elected officials ought to be held to a higher standard and, therefore, ought to do things the right way instead of claiming special privilege as an excuse to do whatever the hell they want.

I happen to fall into the latter category.

As far as I can tell, a crapload of politicians do hinky things because they know there will be no or limited blow back. They believe, apparently correctly, that they can break the rules without losing the support of their base. So, they break the rules and count on partisan voters to ignore their transgressions. Hell, these days partisans from both sides defend their chosen ones hinky decisions.

For example:

[QUOTE=iiandyiiii]
So, at worst, some people may have sent Hillary some classified TK stuff, and she didn’t realize it.
[/QUOTE]

The first part of that sentence is true about people sending Clinton TK information. The second part is pure speculation on iiandyiii’s part. It is absolving Clinton of any wrong doing WITH NO EVIDENCE TO SUPPORT the absolution. None. Worse, actually as Clinton should have known that TK was by default classified.

Slee

235

The server was already there, set up and configured for her campaign. Are you suggesting this was pre-meditated before she even planned on losing the election and being appointed to the victor’s cabinet?

236

I think this fits with the idea that she wanted control, and it was allowed and in line with previous SoS behavior (even if they didn’t have the extensive set-up she did).

I agree. I just can’t think of a single politician of the last several decades (if not more), especially at the level that aspires to be President, that didn’t have the extreme level of ego that pretty much demands operating with these special privileges. If I thought there was someone to vote for who didn’t feel this way, I’d strongly consider them, but so far it’s pretty much always been choosing the least evil option.

It certainly doesn’t absolve her – that’s a big screw-up… she should know better (as should have Powell). That just seems far more likely then knowingly disregarding proper handling procedures, since there’s no benefit from ignoring that stuff (unless you buy into “Hillary is evil and wants to destroy America” stuff).

It also jives with my personal experience in the Navy (active duty and civilian) – receiving controlled and classified info by mistake is incredibly common, to the point that there’s probably at least one incident detected per day on the Navy base I work on (and probably dozens more per day that no one notices). Considering how many people I’ve known who have received controlled and classified info in the wrong fashion without noticing, this seems, to me, to be an incredibly likely occurrence, even at the highest level (and with very smart and experienced people, like Colin Powell).

237

There is no “us”, elucidator. There are only those who have the proper clearance and those who don’t qualify. If’n y’all ain’t aware of the situation as ‘tis, maybe the gub’mint don’t be a wantin’ y’all ta know? :smiley:

238

Question: Since it appears that a number of the emails were only classified well after being received, is the recipient notified of the change?

If someone receives classified information they are not cleared for, what happens? Are they required to retain the email anyway or delete?
If it’s deleted, how does that work with required records retention?

239

If I receive controlled or classified info that was sent improperly, I’m required to notify my security officer immediately. I don’t delete it, download it, or do anything with it, until the security officer tells me what to do. This will sometimes involve a “digital scrub” of my computer (which might involve wiping the hard drive).

If I was sent something improperly, but didn’t know it and it was discovered weeks later, then the same thing might occur (I’d report it, or the discoverer would, and then wait for instructions from security).

As far as record-retention, I don’t know exactly, but I think a record would be kept of the improper communication, while the actual data was scrubbed/removed from any uncleared systems.

When someone sends something improperly, in my experience they receive a very mild admonition, along with re-training. If this is their 2nd or 3rd time making the same mistake, they may temporarily lose their “privileges” of transmitting controlled/classified data until they go through a semi-rigorous re-training period. If they have a longer history of mistakes, they may lose their privileges permanently (or be fired). I don’t know of anyone ever being prosecuted for making these mistakes, unless it was done on purpose (e.g. selling or sharing classified information with the press or with foreign governments).

240

post snipped:

I don’t buy into “Hillary is evil and wants to destroy America”. I do, however, buy into 'Hillary (and Bill) believe that they should be able to do whatever they want but don’t like it when they are called on unethical behavior. Both Bill and Hillary have been caught in possibly unethical situations numerous times. Therefore Hillary wants to control over as much information as possible."

Their pattern of behavior is a) do something hinky b) claim they didn’t do anything hinky c) blame the ‘vast right wing conspiracy’ for pointing out that they did something hinky and d) riding it out with the support of their base.

The list of Clinton scandals is quite long. There are some bullshit ones in there, like Vince Foster. However, things like Fliegate, Clinton Foundation (My god, the Clintons took lots and lots of money from the UAE) , cattle futures (I particularly like this one - 1 in 31 trillion!) make one question the Cllintons ethics.

Note, I don’t think most of our politicians are particularly ethical. It just seems to me that the Clintons are much better at getting away with shit than the other lying assholes.

We, the voters, could solve these kinds of problems. However we don’t. Instead of calling these folks out and punishing them for their behavior, we let it slide if the particular politician is on ‘our’ side.

Slee