18 Aug 2015
David Ignatius on Clinton email controversy: 'Disrespect for the system is animating a lot of the anger now.'
Posted on 08/28/2015 9:23:43 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Does Hillary Clinton have a serious legal problem because she may have transmitted classified information on her private e-mail server? After talking with a half-dozen knowledgeable lawyers, I think this “scandal” is overstated. Using the server was a self-inflicted wound by Clinton, but it’s not something a prosecutor would take to court.
“It’s common” that people end up using unclassified systems to transmit classified information, said Jeffrey Smith, a former CIA general counsel who’s now a partner at Arnold & Porter, where he often represents defendants suspected of misusing classified information.
There are always these back channels,” Smith explained. “It’s inevitable, because the classified systems are often cumbersome and lots of people have access to the classified e-mails or cables.” People who need quick guidance about a sensitive matter often pick up the phone or send a message on an open system. They shouldn’t, but they do.
“It’s common knowledge that the classified communications system is impossible and isn’t used,” said one former high-level Justice Department official. Several former prosecutors said flatly that such sloppy, unauthorized practices, although technically violations of law, wouldn’t normally lead to criminal cases.
Clinton’s use of a private e-mail server while she was secretary of state has been a nagging campaign issue for months. Critics have argued that the most serious problem is possible transmission of classified information through that server. Many of her former top aides have sought legal counsel. But experts in national-security law say there may be less here than it might appear.
First, experts say, there’s no legal difference whether Clinton and her aides passed sensitive information using her private server or the official “state.gov” account that many now argue should have been used. Neither system is authorized for transmitting classified information.
Second, prosecution of such violations is extremely rare.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
This needs to be labeled horse $hit!
Ambassador Stevens can’t read The Washington Post because of Hillary Clinton.
Thank you, Washington Post, for sticking-up for the thief and killer Hillary Clinton.
Defending what she did is inexcusable and unprofessional from a journalistic standpoint.
I honestly wonder what WAPos opinion would be if all things were exactly equal, but hillary’s last name was Bush?
A Quick Note on Hillary's Emails
I haven't commented much on this topic because I don't want to give the impression that I have some sort of insider knowledge about how SecState Clinton handled her classified communications. I don't. I never sent her a message directly, and treated only with her staff. I met her on several occasions and sat in meetings with her, but never exchanged emails with her.
That said, I am troubled by what is clearly a big lie coming out from her and her defenders. While sitting in my Vegas hotel last night, I was watching some Democrat operative or another on CNN (I think)--can't remember his name. He was saying something I am also seeing the Hillary troll force write on social media boards. Just to remind, we have reports coming out from intel IGs and DOJ that it seems that some of Hillary's emails contained--despite repeated denials--highly classified information and were sent through her off-the-books home server maintained by a company, reportedly, with a shady past. We see her stooges claim that Clinton never sent any email labelled Top Secret/SCI. OK. Folks, please, that ain't the point. Of course she didn't send any email with that label on it. Nobody is saying she ran exact copies of State, NSA, CIA, DIA, etc., cables through her server. The accusation, and it seems to have validity, is that she DISCUSSED TS/SCI and other classified material over this unsecure, off-the-books server, AND discussed it with persons not cleared for it. That, my friends, is indeed against the law and punishable by jail.
Hillary Clinton is a liar who does not think the laws apply to her. If I had handled classified information at State the way she did, I would be in jail. Now we will see how our highly politicized DOJ handles the issue.
I smell a big, stinky conflict of interest.
WaPo - yes, lots of water has passed under the bridges since Watergate.
Partisan Media Shill Alert!
Yeah Dave, try telling that to an OSI investigator and see what happens.
Has our government found out that the Clinton Crime Family has a whole lotta stuffins on the players of our government and if they don’t back her, it’s gonna come out???
Hummm I wonder what the ‘teflon don’ would have done with this one????
he often represents defendants suspected of misusing classified information....
OH REALLY??? and what becomes of THOSE CASES??
It’s not the initial crime that causes problems, it’s the reaction to it.
Watergate burglary - small deal
the coverup that followed - big deal
Lewinsky - small deal
the lying that followed - big deal
.. so it is with Hillary. If the initial e-mail & server wrongdoing wasn’t a big deal, Hillary’s lies, half-truths and evasiveness about it were the killer that destroyed her approval ratings.
These leftist writers can apologise for Hillary all they want, it still won’t undo the negative image that most voters have of her. She’s doomed, by her own hand.
Hillary “Ma Barker” Clinton did nothing wrong, everybody does it, so it’s OK. When other people do it they go to prison, but Hillary is a member of the Clinton crime family so she will pass.
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/hillary-clinton-september-11-iraq-war
New Republic, The - April 2, 2007
Hillary has also recruited a new and relatively unknown adviser: longtime defense establishment insider Jeffrey Smith. “When she went on Armed Services, she telephoned me and asked if I would come up and give her a sense of the issues she'd encounter,” says Smith, who served as general counsel to the CIA in the mid-’90s and is now a partner at the Washington law firm Arnold & Porter. Though Smith has civil libertarian views on intelligence (he strongly opposes the Guantanamo Bay detainee program), he is a West Point graduate with roots in military culture who spent several years working for Nunn on the Senate Armed Services Committee. During the 2004 campaign, Smith said he had found John Kerry's 1971 charges of U.S. war crimes in Vietnam offensive. Smith has been a harsh critic of the Iraq war from the start, but, like Hillary, he has argued that the United States can't summarily withdraw. “[N]o one should question how difficult—or how important—it is to achieve our mission,” he wrote in a 2003 op-ed.
http://www.salon.com/2004/03/09/kerryintel/
President Bush is attacking John Kerry for supposedly trying to “gut” U.S. intelligence services in the mid-90s. Here to refute him is former general counsel of both the CIA and Senate Armed Services Committee, Jeffrey Smith. (The following is a statement released by Smith.)
“I am particularly upset by the Bush Campaign efforts to paint Senator Kerry as being out of the mainstream in the mid-90s with respect to efforts to ensure responsible spending by and for the intelligence community. If he was out of the mainstream, so were most other Senators — including many Republican Senators.
“In 1996, I was General Counsel of the CIA and was asked by then DCI John Deutch to co-chair an inquiry into the practice of the National Reconnaissance Office under which the NRO accumulated vast sums of money that were largely outside of any control by the Congress, the DCI or the Secretary of Defense. Our inquiry revealed that the NRO had for years accumulated very substantial amounts as a ‘rainy day fund.’ For a variety of reasons, very few people, including the Secretary of Defense, the DCI and key members of the Congressional oversight committees, knew about that practice. As a result there was inadequate management by the DCI and the Secretary of Defense and virtually no oversight by the Congress.
“When that practice and other concerns, such as the cost of the new NRO headquarters in Virginia, came to light many Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle were outraged. The bill he sponsored in 1995, S. 1290, which is now being criticized by the Bush Campaign, is essentially similar to other measures sponsored by many other Senators in the mid-90s, including Republican Senators, that were attempts to ensure that money appropriated to the Intelligence Community was wisely spent and to re-assert adequate Congressional oversight of the intelligence budget.”
“It’s common” that people end up using unclassified systems to transmit classified information robbing convenience stores, said Jeffrey Smith, a former CIA general counsel who’s now a partner at Arnold & Porter, where he often represents defendants suspected of misusing classified information robbing convenience stores.
There are always these back channels quiet stores in the middle of the night,” Smith explained. “It’s inevitable, because the classified systems are work is often cumbersome and lots of people have access to the classified e-mails or cables convenience stores.” People who need quick guidance about a sensitive matter money often pick up the phone a gun or send a message on an open system and rob a 7-11. They shouldn’t, but they do.
5.56mm
Phony scandals.
“it’s not something a prosecutor would take to court. “
Not the Obama Justice Dept anyway.
18 Aug 2015
David Ignatius on Clinton email controversy: 'Disrespect for the system is animating a lot of the anger now.'
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