Not a four star though: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/petra...

I think it's safe to say that if Petraeus had done what Hillary apparently did, he would be incarcerated.

If conversations in social settings with former colleagues in the IC / DoD are indicative of sentiment throughout these communities, there will be a tremendous amount of discontent if she is not prosecuted for her decision to conduct official communications as one of the most senior members of the USG over an unsecured personal email server starting in 2009.

Strongly disagree. Petraeus was far worse; he intentionally and knowingly gave classified information to someone not authorized to see it. He pled guilty.

It's unclear (IMHO unlikely) that Hillary did anything illegal. She has not been charged with a crime. She has not, so far as we know, been investigated for any crime. And there's no evidence any classified information was leaked, intentionally or not.

Broadwell had a TS clearance and was a reserve military intelligence officer, so....no.

> "court papers filed with the plea deal stated Petraeus in 2011 unlawfully gave Broadwell the black books of classified information including identities of covert officers, code word information, war strategy, intelligence capabilities, diplomatic talks and information from high-level White House National Security Council meetings."

> "Petraeus then lied to the FBI about it, the court papers said."

source: http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/former-cia-director-petr...

Clinton choosing to use a private email server was a big mistake, but Petraeus' actions are MUCH worse. Not even in the same category. He's lucky he did not end up in jail.

> Clinton choosing to use a private email server was a big mistake, but Petraeus' actions are MUCH worse. Not even in the same category.

Always great to hear from people who know how open investigations will be resolved.

To be clear: HRC is accused not only of conducting official business in a manner that was completely unauthorized from an infosec perspective and in direct violation of both IC standards and a Presidential Executive Order; she also apparently ordered a subordinate who needed to send her classified materials to "turn into nonpaper w no identifying heading and send nonsecure" [0]. To me this sounds like her giving a direct order to mishandle classified information.

It sounds like you're on Team Hillary and that's fine, we all have our political opinions. I do not think that your characterization of Petraeus' actions as "MUCH worse" than HRC's is accurate, either in terms of a reasonable-person evaluation of the severity of each respective (alleged in HRC's case) infraction or in terms of how the IC punishes these kinds of transgressions. They are normally merciless when it comes to people intentionally violating the integrity of classified information systems. Merciless.

[0]: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/state-department-releases-more-c...

> HRC is accused not only of....

No accusations have been leveled at Clinton, except in the press. That is, she has not been indicted, arrested, or charged.

That's not a "Team Hillary" thing, that is the literal truth of the legal situation.

Petraeus was charged and convicted.

<That is, she has not been indicted, arrested, or charged.>

That's your definition of "accusation"? By that standard, O.J. Simpson has no remaining accusations of homicide.

Her server setup at the time was legal and authorized. Most of your info above is incorrect.

Hillary is the subject of an open investigation? News to me. Do you have a source?

> If it was a two star general who did this, he'd be in jail.

You go to jail if you anger someone powerful and/or are disloyal, e.g., by leaking something without authorization or whistleblowing. Everyone else gets a slap on the wrist at most, afaict. General and CIA Director Petraeus gave classified information to his mistress; CIA Director John Deutch kept classified information unsecured on his home computer. Neither received significant punishment.

You see similar things in the military as a tension between enlisted service members and officers. It's a common belief that officers can get away with murder while the enlisted are given severe punishments for minor infractions. There's plenty of truth to it, but also a less visible component; it's far easier to get rid of officers than enlisted because enlistment confers rights, whereas officers serve at the pleasure of the President. So while officers aren't being made to stand in front of everyone while being berated for showing up late, I've known officers to be kicked out for things as minor as poorly-timed kidney stones (right before they were supposed to start a school.)

Anyway, all that is to say that the underlings are subjected to the rules, but up at the top it's more a matter of shuffling people away, often with minimal fanfare.

Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice also did the same thing.

Powell and Rice did not operate their own private email servers.

That seems somewhat worse, they used private email on servers they did not control?

A rare lapse in following procedure, likely accidental, is not even on the same planet as setting up a private email server to avoid oversight.

Those emails would still be safer on gmail than in some small IT firm's bathroom closet.

You are asserting that she did this to avoid oversight. If that were truly the case, wouldn't she have had a drastic hard drive failure and unreliable backups? That model has worked for IT departments for years.

Isn't it far more likely that she instructed someone on her staff to instruct someone in the back office to instruct some underpaid admin to just "make crap work so I can stop using dialup?"

I know we cannot prove a negative, but I'd bet $100 she couldn't edit an /etc/sendmail.cf without bricking it. (I know that's not your point, I just find it an amusing thought.)

Edit: parent was edited and my reply appears nonsensical. The parent stated that the server was set up to avoid oversight, which I do not believe has been established as true.

> parent was edited and my reply appears nonsensical. The parent stated that the server was set up to avoid oversight

Still does.

> I do not believe has been established as true

The only reason for someone in her position to set up a private email server is to avoid oversight - it's bizarre that anyone could think otherwise - the burden of proof is on her at this point.

But not in AOL servers, or yahoo. Private servers can be set up pretty freaking well for security. Not sure how hers were setup though.

The extremely low physical security of Hillary's server probably outweighs all of this.

It was just sitting in an office. A single person could have literally kicked in the door and waltzed off with a huge cache of state secrets, and we probably wouldn't even have a video tape of the theft.

The server was not secure enough to be storing state secrets. There's no arguing against this.

It wasn't accidental at all, they all knew they weren't on government email servers.

... when it was perfectly legal. It wasn't made illegal until 2009, by Obama's own hand.