Posted on 01/25/2016 11:44:55 AM PST by jazusamo
From the start, since we first learned about the home-brew email system then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton set up for conducting her government business, I've argued that she very likely committed felony violations of federal law. Yet it appears I underestimated the gravity of her misconduct -- ironically, by giving her the benefit of the doubt on a significant aspect of the scheme.
When the scandal went public in March 2015, Mrs. Clinton -- already the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee -- held a press conference to explain herself. Among other well-documented whoppers, she maintained that she had never stored classified documents on, or transmitted them via, her private server. I theorized that she was exploiting the public's unfamiliarity with how classified information is handled in government systems:
In the government, classified documents are maintained on separate, super-highly secured systems. ... Mrs. Clinton would not have been able to access classified documents even from a ".gov" account [i.e., a non-classified State Department account], much less from her private account -- she'd need to use the classified system. In fact, many government officials with security clearances read "hard copies" of classified documents in facilities designed for that purpose rather than accessing them on computers....
[S]ince we're dealing with Clintonian parsing here, we must consider the distinction between classified documents and classified information -- the latter being what is laid out in the former. It is not enough for a government official with a top-secret clearance to refrain from storingclassified documents on private e-mail; the official is also forbidden to discussthe information contained in those documents. The fact that Mrs. Clinton says she did not store classified documents on her private server, which is very likely true, does not discount the distinct possibility that she discussed classified matters in private e-mails.
In sum, knowing how physically difficult it is to move classified documents from the secured communications systems to the non-secured ones, I figured Mrs. Clinton's claim that she had never done that was "very likely true." Instead, I reasoned that her main violation would be privately communicating the substance of the information contained in classified documents, not transmitting the documents themselves.
While that would still be a felony, it was one she hoped to obscure and, if called on it, to dismiss as unintentional sloppiness by a busy government official, not willful flouting of the law.
My bad: The Clintons have made careers of defying our assumptions about how low they can go. I should have reminded myself that anything was possible.
Now, Paul Sperry reports that the FBI is probing indications that Mrs. Clinton did precisely what I assumed, because of the time and purposeful effort involved, she wouldn't have done.
In his New York Post column over the weekend, Mr. Sperry explains the difference between the government systems for classified information -- SIPRNet and JWICS (i.e., "Secret Internet Protocol Router Network" and "Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System") -- and its NIPRNet system (i.e., the Non-classified Internet Protocol Router Network).
As I noted in my National Review weekend column , we now know that highly classified information from the secure systems ended up on Clinton's private, unsecured (and relatively easy to hack) system. That, however, is not the half of it. Sperry reports that the actual documents themselves appear to have ended up in Clinton's unsecured system -- but carefully shorn of their classified markings.
Quoting a veteran Diplomatic Security Service special agent named Raymond Fournier, Sperry elaborates:
[I]t's clear from some of the classified emails made public that someone on Clinton's staff essentially "cut and pasted" content from classified cables into the messages sent to her. The classified markings are gone, but the content is classified at the highest levels -- and so sensitive in nature that "it would have been obvious to Clinton." Most likely the information was, in turn, e-mailed to her via NIPRNet.To work around the closed, classified systems, which are accessible only by secure desktop workstations whose hard drives must be removed and stored overnight in a safe, Clinton's staff would have simply retyped classified information from the systems into the non-classified system or taken a screen shot of the classified document, Fournier said. "Either way, it's totally illegal."
Fornier added:
It takes a very conscious effort to move a classified e-mail or cable from the classified systems over to the unsecured open system and then send it to Hillary Clinton's personal e-mail account[.] ... That's no less than a two-conscious-step process.
Sperry believes the FBI is focusing on three top Clinton aides at the State Department -- chief-of-staff Cheryl Mills and deputies Huma Abedin and Jake Sullivan -- as the potential culprits who carried out Clinton's suspected scheme to defeat classified information protections.
An already reported string of email exchanges between Clinton and Sullivan is particularly damning in terms of Clinton's intent and knowledge: Clinton directed her aide to "Turn into nonpaper w no identifying heading and send non-secure."
As Sperry translates:
Clinton instructed Sullivan to convert a classified document into an unclassified email attachment by scanning it into an unsecured computer and sending it to her without any classified markings.
Note the evolution of Mrs. Clinton's talking points. Remember, her initial claim was that there was no classified information stored or transmitted on her private system. When that became untenable -- i.e., the moment the emails she chose to retain (as opposed to the 30,000-plus she destroyed) started becoming public -- Clinton morphed it into an insistence that nothing "marked classified" had been transmitted or stored.
I made the apparent mistake of giving her the benefit of the doubt: I thought she was guilty of felony mishandling of classified information, but I assumed (wrongly, it seems) that she was being forced by her reckless disregard for the rules to retreat to what she hoped would be a more plausible defense.
Now, it appears there was nothing reckless about it.
Mind you, even the reckless mishandling of classified information is a serious crime. But all indications are that Mrs. Clinton was not grossly negligent. This was a thought-out, quite intentional violation of law. It now looks as if her scheme involved erasing the markings from some documents because she (a) knew what she was doing was a serious violation of law, (b) anticipated the possibility of being called on it, and (c) hoped to set up a fraudulent defense that she lacked knowledge that the documents were classified.
That would be willful criminality, not just criminal recklessness. What is reckless is the Democratic party's rolling of the dice on Hillary Clinton with no Plan B ... just a Plan Bernie.
A LOT less!
Yeah, several thousand missing emails plus an illegal server vs eighteen missing minutes of audio.
Hmm.
If it was not in compliance with the DOD Security Technical Implementation Guide (STIG) and certified as such, it was "Home Brewed", period.
It is almost certain that the russkies, NORKS, Chicoms and probably a dozen other hostile entities had free access to Madam Benghazi's emails. If you have evidence to the contrary, then put up, otherwise shut up.
Gravely criminal for which she’ll gravely skate.
Laws are for the peasants.
Remember Mills had a hand in what materials were turned over to the first Benghazi committee, you know the one where all of Clinton's buds were, she was seen picking and choosing what went to the committee and who sat on it, Pickering was one of the hand picked puppets of Clinton.
Yep and the press will go along with the charade. They will say mistakes were made by some of Clinton's aides and the fact that she ordered them to do it will be ignored. From her emailed instructions she seems to believe she is too important to be bothered with legal niceties. Her team probably believes the same.
If the evidence shows that classified paragraphs made it verbatim from a classified doc into an email sent to her, someone will have to go under the bus, although they will probably get a reduced charge with no real consequences. If she typed from classified docs into her email that's a different story, but why would she do that when she has all those underlings to do it for her?
They spent eight years in the White House and were under investigation basically the whole time.
When it was over, they walked out with multi-million dollar book deals, a senate seat, unlimited millions in speaking fees and a library/foundation slush fund that's probably the envy of every dictator on the planet.
Sure, Bill lost a law license that he never actually cared about for a few years and basically all of their friends either wound up dead or in prison, but the Clintons were fine.
I think a more important (but ignored) factor is that Hillary had people on her staff who didn’t have proper clearance, log into her SPECIAL accounts to transcribe and send the info to her on her ‘private server’.
Yes the email stuff is criminal, the question all along is will our FBI do it’s job and refer this and will there be an indictment?
Anyone using a private server in the private sector dealing with sensitive info would also be prosecuted AND fired.
Nobody had to hack any email to plan the attack in Benghazi. Hillary and others planned the attack in Benghazi.
Obama will issue pardon for “crimes she may have committed” like Ford did for Nixon. He will sign executive order to keep the pardon secret. DOJ can do nothing.
This server was set up strictly to keep information about the pay to play foundation she has set up!!!
It now looks as if her scheme involved erasing the markings from some documents because she (a) knew what she was doing was a serious violation of law,(b) anticipated the possibility of being called on it, and (c) hoped to set up a fraudulent defense that she lacked knowledge that the documents were classified.
That would be willful criminality, not just criminal recklessness.
What is reckless is the Democratic party's rolling of the dice on Hillary Clinton with no Plan B ... just a Plan Bernie.
Andrew C. McCarthy needs to stop giving people he likes the benefit of the doubt... he should follow the facts where they take him.. Oh, and Bernie honeymooned in Russia... in 1988... lived in Hyde Park Chicago in 1964 - the neighborhood's communist hay days - and was a member of a Trotskyite organization...
Just a rhetorical point, if it has not been made elsewhere:
How does Hillary say she handled classified emails?
If Hillary stands by her assertion that her private email server did not handle classified items: is it fair to ask: was any classified information ever communicated to Hillary by email, on any server at all? Did she have a dedicated state department email server (different from her private server) where all top secret business was conducted? If so, what does that official, secure state department server look like, and how many classified email communications are on it?
Do we know: did Hillary have, or use any form of secure and official State Department email?
By Hillary asserting her innocence, is she expecting us to believe that during her tenure, she never received any classified email communications whatsoever? If she did, what email server was used? If no classified information was knowingly received or transmitted on Hillary’s private server (her assertion), could that mean that Hillary is also saying that at no time did she receive or transit any classified email at all? If she did, where is that stash of emails?
You make a fair point, I’ve never read that she had a secure State device.
Perhaps this is why two Navy SEALs were ordered to STAND DOWN and NOT depart the Annex for the Consulate (they went ANYWAY)?
Egypt's new president vows to free blind sheikh tied to 1993 WTC bombing
But would they throw her under the bus? Remember, the McDougalls and Webster Hubbell went to jail rather than risk their lives giving up the Clintons.
Freeing the blind sheik was probably intended as the payment for the attack.
The attack itself was planned in part as a cover story to explain how the terrorist got the weapons.
Had the attack gone as planned they could claim they weren’t giving the terrorist weapons the terrorist just took the weapons that were being gathered up by the CIA.
I just do not understand how such serious offences can be overlooked. And yet - it seems she can walk away from this.
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