Posted on 03/04/2015 6:39:04 AM PST by SeekAndFind
In his latest piece, National Review’s Charles Cooke related a choice exchange he had with a former Clinton White House staffer who attempted to defend Hillary Clinton’s role in this latest scandal involving her determination to avoid using an official and secure email address, as is mandated by law.
“It’s ‘worth remembering,’ a former Clinton administration staffer assured me quickly on Twitter, ‘that Hillary didn’t have email until she was in her forties. She was clueless.’” Cooke wrote. “‘I just mean,’ he added, desperately, that “she’s no dummy — except possibly with computers — where she kinda is.’”
So the Democratic Party’s anointed 2016 nominee who, we are assured, possesses the intellect and the acumen of a transformative political figure born to shatter glass ceilings devolves into timid and irrational Neanderthal when confronted by technological marvels like electronic mail? It’s not especially convincing, but at least it is a defense.
As reporters go digging into this most recent Clinton controversy, however, it turns out that that the former secretary of state may have possessed a touch more technological prowess than her supporters initially led the public to believe. At least, those around her were savvy in their pursuit of a parallel email system that was apparently designed to evade federal oversight.
“Hillary Clinton created her own private email system that she exclusively used as secretary of state, ignoring ‘very specific guidance’ from the White House by not even creating, let alone using, a government email account,” The Daily Beast revealed on Wednesday citing a bombshell Associated Press investigation.
America’s gentle but technologically enfeebled grandmother-in-chief was, in fact, operating email servers and an internet domain that were run out of her family home in Chappaqua, New York. “The highly unusual practice of a Cabinet-level official physically running her own email would have given Clinton, the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate, impressive control over limiting access to her message archives,” The AP reported. “It also would distinguish Clinton’s secretive email practices as far more sophisticated than some politicians, including Mitt Romney and Sarah Palin, who were caught conducting official business using free email services operated by Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc.”
This little trick was not only evasive and quite probably illegal, but also unique to Clinton. It is going to prove increasingly difficult for the former secretary’s defenders to back her behavior while preserving their own integrity. When figures like Karl Rove and Sarah Palin ran afoul of the press as a result of lost emails or the use of private accounts to conduct official business, the reaction from the political class was anything but muted.
Operating her own server would have afforded Clinton additional legal opportunities to block government or private subpoenas in criminal, administrative or civil cases because her lawyers could object in court before being forced to turn over any emails. And since the Secret Service was guarding Clinton’s home, an email server there would have been well protected from theft or a physical hacking.
But homemade email servers are generally not as reliable, secure from hackers or protected from fires or floods as those in commercial data centers. Those professional facilities provide monitoring for viruses or hacking attempts, regulated temperatures, off-site backups, generators in case of power outages, fire-suppression systems and redundant communications lines.
…
It was unclear whom Clinton hired to set up or maintain her private email server, which the AP traced to a mysterious identity, Eric Hoteham. That name does not appear in public records databases, campaign contribution records or Internet background searches. Hoteham was listed as the customer at Clinton’s $1.7 million home on Old House Lane in Chappaqua in records registering the Internet address for her email server since August 2010.
Hillary Clinton had to know that this would someday come to light. She must have been aware that her scandalous behavior would one day jeopardize her political future and, as a result, her political party’s viability. Moreover, as the AP reported, her use of unsecure email servers might have endangered American diplomatic security had she ever communicated anything of a sensitive nature via email, though we may never know if she did for sure. And the most charitable claim one could make in Clinton’s defense is that all of this was done merely to preserve Clinton’s sense of privilege and self-entitlement.
Relax, the Clinton camp assures the public. We have all of the former secretary’s emails on file, and they can be provided at your request. According to The New York Times, that’s simply not true.
In 2012, congressional investigators asked the State Department for a wide range of documents related to the attack on the United States diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya. The department eventually responded, furnishing House committees with thousands of documents.
But it turns out that that was not everything.
The State Department had not searched the email account of former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton because she had maintained a private account, which shielded it from such searches, department officials acknowledged on Tuesday.
With the news growing rapidly worse for Team Clinton, Media Matters for America founder and former pro-Hillary Super PAC board member David Brock appeared on MSNBC to douse the flames of controversy lapping at Clinton’s heels. In that effort, Brock spent most of his time attacking the “sloppy” reporting at The New York Times, the credulity of Times’ reporters, and even the hosts of the program of which he was a guest.
This is a scandal, and the Clinton camp’s determination to dig in and avoid contrition at all costs is only making it worse. What makes this truly damaging for Clinton is that the media does not have to translate this controversy to the public. Every American understands plainly what conditions might lead someone to conduct official business on a private email account that is free from oversight, and none of them are virtuous. The public understands intuitively the ramifications of this disreputable behavior, and Clinton’s defenders are only throwing gasoline on the fire by attacking the integrity of those responsible for investigating this episode.
Clinton administration staffer assured me quickly on Twitter, ‘that Hillary didn’t have email until she was in her forties. She was clueless.
++++
That’s going to be her and their media spin:
MEDIA FLUNKY: “Hillary, What do you have to say about these right wing attacks on you about what they call a scandal concerning your emails”?
HILLARY: “(cackling)...yes they never give up do they but I can assure you and the public that I had been assured by...(low level legal adviser under the bus) that my email system was within the boundaries of the law”
MEDIA FLUNKY: “But Hillary, what about the elaborate computer setup at your home for your emails”?
HILLARY: “(cackling loudly) Are you kidding me, that would take an computer expert to set that up, as a matter of fact, when the IT expert came my home in to set that up...(IT thrown under the bus) he assured me that all my emails would be perfectly secure and within the present law”
Aaaaaaaaaaand the spin will keep spinning.
Ignorance isn’t an excuse on this. So rather than have security cleared personnel to handle her government account, SHE felt she would rather remain dumb with her own private account.......how did she manage to use that one?
I don't. She got an education in keeping your email out of the system and out of the reach of Congressional subpoenas watching how they got rid of Al Gore's email when she was at the WH. She knew exactly what she was doing.
Let’s make someone else the first woman president.
My conspiracy addled brain sees it this way: The Dems want both Houses of Congress and the Presidency in Republican hands when the economy finally collapses.
It's an elaborate game of musical chairs that ends when TSHTF during the next administration.
I’m sure I’ll be corrected if I’m wrong but email didn’t come into vogue until the early ‘90’s, did it? Even then most private companies did not hook up to the internet to avoid personal use of emails and internet by their employees. Computers were primarily used for word processing and spreadsheets. AND don’t forget the DOS period! Lotus 123?
•Missing six billion dollars from state department
+
•Multiple phone and email addresses
+
•Missing/unavailable emails
+
•a person who views themselves as poor even though they own two houses worth millions
Connect the dots!
I didn't say ignorance is an excuse. I didn't even say that the defense is true or accurate, only that there is an element of truth to it: the Clintons, at least in the past, were highly-averse to personally using technology.
The problem with the defense in this case is that no one is (or at least no one should be) suggesting that Hitlery personally set up an e-mail server, a mail domain, etc. Obviously, she ordered her minions to do it. Just because the Clintons didn't personally use the devices didn't mean that folks didn't use them on their behalf.
sitetest
Fairly obvious that Hillary has no problem sacrificing national security for her own personal gains. Just ask Ambassador Stevens.
You're joking, right? By 1997, AOL, Compuserve, MSN and dozens of other major players were going great guns. The Clintons had already been through two multi-bazillion dollar Presidential campaigns which I'm sure used the Web and email for much of their communications and scheduling. If you recall back then the Clinton folks always PRIDED themselves on being hip and up-to-date.
This will not derail her presidential aspirations. The excuse-makers are already working overtime. These folks have no shame.
For starters, I want to know what foreign governments were contacted through her private e-mail system. What monies have been solicited, from whom and what favors have been promised in return? Also, what contacts have been made with Muslim Brotherhood people, what was discussed, what promises were made. How many Chinese government and other agents have been contacted? What was discussed? How many ways has US national security been compromised through this system?
Team Obama and Team Clinton HATE each other. That the NY Times broke this story is quite telling. Team Obama does not want Hillary succeeding Barack. He sees Elizabeth Warren as a much more worthy successor to his revolution.
Besides Obama detests Sid Vicious Blumenthal. That Hillary was using him as her de facto deputy at State must enrage Obama since Obama specifically dictated that Blumenthal is to have ZERO official dealings with HIS administration.
This scandal has legs specifically because El Jefe Obama wants it to. Hillary is in DEEP Kim Chee.
Tin foil on:
Hill and Co take the 6. Billion our of State department treasury and distribute to individuals or states that will in turn contribute to the Clinton family Fund. And it’s all kept hush hush on her own private email. /off?????
Hillary was 45 when when she entered the WH in 1993. She was 50 in October of 1997.
Almost nobody had commercial e-mail in 1993 so I'm guessing she didn't have it prior to 1993.
The WWW was in it's infancy in 1993. It exploded by 1995.
I was referring to the aide trying to cover Hillary's ass with the “Hillary didn't have e-mail until she was in her 40’s.” quote.
It's a crap statement but probably mostly correct for all the wrong reasons.
How many times have I heard that e-publication referred to as WorldNut daily, on this board? Good source, or no?
They were pioneers in the early days of alternative news sites. Just for that alone, they were the targets of aggressive smear campaigns because they weren't acting as the Praetorian guards for liberals, as the "mainstream" media were used to doing.
In fact, the current term MSM was coined as a result of WND.
In these early days, they did a good job of exposing the Clinton administration scandals that the MSM was covering up. However, they did have a tabloid look and feel to them, and sometimes their yellow journalism (today called activist journalism) was more stark than at other sites. This opened them up to criticism and discredit when they tried to take on credible journalism, such as reporting on the accusations made against John Kerry by his fellow swift boat veterans. There was a very strong coordinated attempt to stop that reporting, and destroying WND in the process was just icing on the cake.
Looking back, anything by Paul Sperry and Aaron Klein was top journalism. Their White House reporter Les Kinsolving, however, was a bomb-thrower of the Sam Donaldson kind. Jerome Corsi led the swift boat reporting, but then he went off-track with the Obama birth certificate reporting.
Here are some links to their early stuff when they were still consequential.
Many people probably don't remember, but WND was the organization that fought for and won the right to be an accredited news service at the White House. At the time, the newsies all banded together and only allowed themselves (the networks, the newspapers, and news mags) to be accredited to cover the White House and Congress.
At first, they declined to admit WND into the press rooms. WND fought and won.
WorldNetDaily locked out of Washington press corps: Joseph Farah slams government media-cabal
The Senate's Star Chamber: Joseph Farah updates readers on accreditation fight with news police
WND banned from covering Capitol (Paul Sperry)
Galley Gatekeepers - The Politics of Press Credentials
But the highlight of WND reporting was the 2000 series on the Gore family in Tennessee, which resulted in Tennessee voting for George Bush. If Gore had won his home state, the Florida fiasco would never have happened.
WorldNetDaily's investigations into Clinton and Gore gave us the George Bush presidency.
-PJ
Which begs the question who or what company has been hired to maintain the server over this period?
I’m no IT guy but according to everyone that I have ever worked around (sorry but it’s been my unpleasant experience that you can’t work WITH them)says that these servers need monitoring, updating, back-up systems, etc.
And heaven forbid you have a catastrophic failure. I’m sure they may claim this had more to do with their foundation then hiding emails from the prying eyes of oversight committees, but that would put even more emphasis on have IT support for your multi-billion dollar Clinton Foundation!
Think about it.
70% of people didn’t have an email account until mid ‘90s when Yahoo started.
I had one as an Intel employee but I only used it for communicating within Intel.
I remember the day when someone came to my office and downloaded Mozilla and I looked at my first website.
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