Posted on 03/05/2015 8:34:27 AM PST by E. Pluribus Unum
Although Hillary Clinton and her allies may be claiming that her private e-mail system is no big deal, Hillary’s State Department actually forced the 2012 resignation of the U.S. ambassador to Kenya in part for setting up an unsanctioned private e-mail system. According to a 2012 report from the State Department’s inspector general, former U.S. ambassador to Kenya Scott Gration set up a private e-mail system for his office in 2011.
The inspector general’s report offered a scathing assessment of Gration’s information security practices — practices that are eerily similar to those undertaken by Clinton while she served as Secretary of State:
Very soon after the Ambassador’s arrival in May 2011, he broadcast his lack of confidence in the information management staff. Because the information management office could not change the Department’s policy for handling Sensitive But Unclassified material, he assumed charge of the mission’s information management operations. He ordered a commercial Internet connection installed in his embassy office bathroom so he could work there on a laptop not connected to the Department email system. He drafted and distributed a mission policy authorizing himself and other mission personnel to use commercial email for daily communication of official government business. During the inspection, the Ambassador continued to use commercial email for official government business. The Department email system provides automatic security, record-keeping, and backup functions as required. The Ambassador’s requirements for use of commercial email in the office and his flouting of direct instructions to adhere to Department policy have placed the information management staff in a conundrum: balancing the desire to be responsive to their mission leader and the need to adhere to Department regulations and government information security standards. The Ambassador compounded the problem on several occasions by publicly berating members of the staff, attacking them personally, loudly questioning their competence, and threatening career-ending disciplinary actions. These actions have sapped the resources and morale of a busy and understaffed information management staff as it supports the largest embassy in sub-Saharan Africa.
The inspector general’s report specifically noted that Gration violated State Department policy by using a private, unsanctioned e-mail service for official business. In its executive summary listing its key judgments against the U.S. ambassador to Kenya who served under Hillary Clinton, the inspector general stated that Gration’s decision to willfully violate departmental information security policies highlighted Gration’s “reluctance to accept clear-cut U.S. Government decisions.” The report claimed that this reluctance to obey governmental security policies was the former ambassador’s “greatest weakness.”
Criticisms of Gration came from both sides of the political aisle. Liberal commentators took him to task for jeopardizing American security by insisting on the use of a private e-mail system. A 2012 dispatch from The New Republic about Gration’s resignation specifically noted that Gration’s e-mail gambit “put classified information about the U.S.’s operations in East Africa at a higher risk for exposure”:
Over the objections of State Department officials, Gration insisted on doing business on his personal laptop and through his Gmail account, according to the former officer. This put classified information about the U.S.’s operations in East Africa at a higher risk for exposure—consider an incident in June 2011, when hackers in China broke into numerous Gmail accounts belonging to senior U.S. officials. (China, for what it’s worth, has an enormous presence in East Africa.)
In a report filed shortly after his resignation, the Washington Post also recounted Gration’s myriad security violations as U.S. ambassador, noting that Gration had “repeatedly violated diplomatic security protocols at the embassy by using unsecured Internet connections.”
The New York Times wrote that Gration “preferred to use Gmail for official business and set up private offices in his residence — and an embassy bathroom — to work outside the purview of the embassy staff.”
Hillary Clinton and her team have thus far remained quiet about the security and encryption standards employed on her private e-mail server. However, at least one person who e-mailed Clinton using her private address was hacked in 2012 by a pseudonymous hacker known only as Guccifer. That hack was the first time Hillary’s secret private e-mail address was revealed to the public.
Although Clinton claimed on Twitter last evening that she “want[s] the public to see my e-mail,” she is yet to explain why to deliberately took steps for years to hide her e-mail from the public for years.
To date, neither she nor her team have released any e-mails that she sent or received while serving as U.S. Secretary of State.
SO WHAT! David Petraus just Plead Guilty to “Improper storage and retention of classified material”
Are official communications between the White Hut and the Secretary of State Classified?? Until “Officially de-classified” YES
Don’t be ridiculous. Rules are for the little folks, not for Her Royal Highness.
That is the biggest legal issue of this entire Hillary e-mail scandal.
These are the questions that I want someone to ask Hillary, preferably under oath.
Identify all of the flunkies in Hillary´s shadow government who went through all of her e-mails to decide what to turn over or who otherwise had access to her e-mail account after she left office.
Were each of these people legally authorized to access, read and copy classified information? Or are we to believe that during her entire time as Secretary of State Hillary never sent or received a single e-mail that contained classified information?
Finally, how do you distinguish Hillary´s gross mishandling of classified information from the actions that cost Patraeus his career and for which he has now been convicted? Laws are for the little people?
Toast, dry.
Do as WE say, not as we DO........................
Bookmarked
Interesting. Our policy in Kenya was developed and executed via Gmail on the crapper.
Gration voted for George W. Bush in 2000.[7] In 2006, he traveled to Africa on a five-nation, fifteen-day, fact-finding tour, accompanying Senator Barack Obama as an “African expert”.[11] He later endorsed Obama’s presidential campaign, citing that Obama had the “judgment, wisdom, courage, experience, and leadership capability that we desperately need.”[12]
In 2007, the Obama campaign “beg[a]n sending Gration out on the stump . . . in an effort to improve the inexperienced senator’s image on national security.”[7] According to Obama foreign policy advisor Denis McDonough, Gration was “considered one of Obama’s three top military advisers, along with Richard Danzig, the former secretary of the Navy during the Clinton administration, and Gen. Merrill McPeak, former Air Force chief of staff.”[7]
Press reports say that in 2009, as a senior official on Obama’s transition team, Gration called and emailed several of President Bush's Pentagon appointees to inform them they were being dismissed. Those calls and emails were followed up by an email from Jim O’Beirne, the special assistant to the secretary of defense for White House liaisons, who expressed exasperation that Gration informed the employees directly instead of letting O’Beirne’s office know first. A Pentagon spokesperson said Secretary of Defense Gates was “absolutely satisfied” with how the transition was handled.[13]
He started of as a child of African missionaries and ended up as a military man compromised by politicians. I can understand the need for compartmentalizing your life, if you have sold your values in pursuit of lucre.
Why bother? We already know the answers to the questions. The answer to the tough questions is,"I don't remember." The answer to the easy ones is,"What difference does it make?" Oaths mean nothing to these people. Like taking an oath to abide by and protect the Constitution.
That’s because the fired person wasn’t an elite that could be trusted to make his own decisions about these things regardless of what the rules say.
Her ISP that allowed SMTP traffic thru their firewall is complicit.
” These are the questions that I want someone to ask Hillary, preferably under oath. “
Why? So she can say “ I don’t recall” 400 more times?
Doesn’t seem like the ISP did anything wrong (it was a godaddy setup). On the other hand, it’s hard to believe that State Department IT security won’t get busted for this, they had to be complicit.
But but certain animals are more equal than others !
How was she supposed to scrub what she didn’t want anyone to see if she didn’t have her own server?
The Ministry Of Propaganda has already declared this a non-issue.
Move on.org already, people /s
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