Remember this was Exchange 2003/2007. It sounds like they didn't have an archiving solution, so most users would probably use Outlook rules or manual actions to move data from their 50/100/250MB mailbox to a PST file on their local PC. Once you do that, it's up to the user to retain or not retain email. It's not a criminal act to clean up old files.
The "fishy" part is a twist on this that isn't in the news -- the use of external BlackBerry devices for stuff other than email. I'll bet you that anything of a substantive nature that was communicated with Clinton was done via PIN messages on the Blackberry devices -- data which was never accessible by anyone other than those folks who had a means to capture and decrypt them in transit. The other thing with PIN messaging is that they were device based, so even if you intercept, you need to establish who had physical custody of the device.
Even files create in the numerous IT applications are not part of the official record unless that applications was designated a system of record.
We don't know how many of Clinton's top IT aide's e-mails were official government records.
Speculation & Proposition: Since he worked to set up an extra-governmental private server which could potentially be used to hide governmental records, that number should be strictly greater than zero.
When I was a federal employee we took yearly training on this exact topic and the rules for what qualifies as a federal record are surprisingly inclusive. The few exclusions include emails that are purely personal and announcements sent to a wide audience.
If an email came from the Secretary, yes. But other than that, no.
All government employees and contractors undergo annual records retention training that requires them to be aware of the obligation to retain relevant communication for the required time period. It even breaks down what emails should be deleted and which ones should be retained. [2]
[1] http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2015/mar/12/...
[2] http://www.archives.gov/records-mgmt/bulletins/2014/2014-06....
Emails from top-level officials like heads of cabinet agencies are part of the official record. Emails from rank and file employees typically are not.
There are well over 2.6 million people in government (over 4 mil counting the military) and hundreds of thousands of contractors. If even 10% of all those emails had to be archived and stored in the National Archives it would constitute an enormous amount of data, much of it of little use.
> All government employees and contractors undergo annual records retention training that requires them to be aware of the obligation to retain relevant communication for the required time period.
I can assure you that record retention training is not standard nor is it annual at State Department. Wasn't that way at DoD in the past either. Some jobs and offices would deal with it a lot more than others but regular joes and janes don't deal with that issue much.
I never claimed that the National Archives performed the records retention. Each individual was required to perform their own retention up until each class of records' retention expiration.
It feels unintuitive, but that was indeed the standard. It is probably still that way, but I no longer work in that sector so I can't authoritatively state that.
Personally, I find it frustrating when commenters on HN make a statement with an authoritative tone without citation or definitive knowledge, just because they truly believe something must be so. It is in fact contributing to noise, not signal.
[1] personal experience
I suppose that the head of State (who was that again?) can't be expected to follow correct procedure if they weren't properly trained. If only there were a diplomat running the department at that time who could have directed that all relevant staffers and heads of state received proper training.
Hopefully this carelessness doesn't affect the importance that staffers give to using proper procedures for handling classified documents.
In all seriousness, that is what this part of your position reduces to: the head of a department didn't break any rules because they didn't receive the proper training. You hopefully can see why people might see that as a problem, even if not a crime.
There is mandatory training on security and handling classified materials.
I'm not saying Clinton didn't receive proper training on either NARA compliance or handling classified material. It just appears that she circumvented the spirit of the archival rules buy maybe not the letter.
Classification-wise it sounds like the information was not marked as classified when it was sent to Clinton. If something is changed to classified after the fact that doesn't mean the recipient of the information committed a violation.
Now if it turns out Clinton knowingly handled classified materials on unclassified systems that would be a security violation. Then the question would get into intent and impact to determine what charges and punishment would be warranted. Usually there has to be some intent and an attempt to distribute classified info before jail time comes into play.
Hillary's problem is that she was handling classified material. The Manning case is a good example of what happens when a peon breaks those rules.
I think that's a bit of a misreading of the situation. First, Clinton was allowed to use a non-state.gov email address as Sec of State. Colin Powell did exactly that and ran into the same problem of some unclassified emails being classified after the fact.
Secondly, the Sec. of State has original classifying authority so there are things she can do with respect to classifications that a normal person with a clearance cannot.
Third, State Dept emails sent over the open internet are not meant to be classified, there are other secure networks for that. This is not a case where someone was intentionally handling classified material on a system it should not be handled on.
Lastly, deleting emails does not mean a crime was committed. People delete emails all the time, people fail to archive their emails all the time. Now, with the State Dept there is an archiving requirement with NARA for official email. But would the aide's emails fall under that? Probably not.
Now if there were criminal charges pending or a subpoena and Pagliano destroyed emails to get around that, it would be a different story. But to date, that doesn't seem to be the case.
Clinton showed poor judgement in setting up her own email server simply because she of all people should know there is a target on her back and that the use of a personal email server might look suspicious. But as of yet there hasn't been any clear evidence of criminal wrongdoing. That could still change but I think the likelihood of a smoking gun has gone down considerably.
By whom? Even the SOS she is required to follow the rules. She did not.
"Secondly, the Sec. of State has original classifying authority so there are things she can do with respect to classifications that a normal person with a clearance cannot."
But she cannot declassify emails.
"Third, State Dept emails sent over the open internet are not meant to be classified"
What actually happened remains to be seen and may never see the light of day.
And then there's intent. One must ask "Why did she request that a separate server be set up?" and then follow her answer to the base of her justification. Why her request? Is her justification valid? Was she ignorant of the ramifications (also bad if you're running for the Presidency)?
In the end one faces the dilemma "Was Hilary evil and deceptive or merely incompetent?" Having read about her part in the Whitewater scandal:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/whitew...
which is titled
"Hillary Clinton and the Whitewater Controversy: A Close-Up" By David Maraniss and Susan Schmidt Washington Post Staff Writers Sunday, June 2, 1996
I know where I come down.
> And then there's intent. One must ask "Why did she request that a separate server be set up?" and then follow her answer to the base of her justification. Why her request? Is her justification valid? Was she ignorant of the ramifications (also bad if you're running for the Presidency)?
These are all good questions. It sounds like she wanted to retain her personal email and be able to field personal business from that same account.
However, as it stands she wasn't required to provide any sort of official justification.
I often wonder if anyone told her how bad this could look for her, and whether she listened or not. I know from people that have worked directly with her that she is not particularly tech-savvy, but that could mean that maybe she thought having a personal server would shield her in ways it cannot, or it could mean that she didn't think it would be a big deal at all. Either way, poor judgement I think.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/mar/...
If you want to get very specific, yes, Colin Powell wasn't using [email protected] as his email. But the issue is the same, although as I said, his reason for doing was different.
Except she could have done that with her .gov email. Classification laws state she can delete personal emails from her .gov account without fear of wrongdoing. So your theory falls flat.
One reason she might have wanted to setup her own private email server was to skirt FOIA requests. Which seems plausible since there were numerous FOIA requests during the Benghazi ordeal. All of which were replied to with 'we have no emails'. It took Syndey Blumenthal's AOL account to be compromised for everyone to discover Clinton's private email server.
This is unlikely. It has to do with her addiction to Blackberry phones and the fact they were insecure. She refused to give up using it. The email server was hosted at home since her 2008 campaign.
I assume she just continued to use the server afterward.
She even contacted the NSA to find a solution to keep using her Blackberry but they couldn't find one. It was just too insecure.
Edit: upon further investigation you might be right...
> One year earlier, during her own presidential campaign, Clinton had said that if elected, “we will adopt a presumption of openness and Freedom of Information Act requests and urge agencies to release information quickly.”
> But in those first few days, Clinton’s senior advisers were already taking steps that would help her circumvent those high-flown words, according to a chain of internal State Department emails released to Judicial Watch, a conservative nonprofit organization suing the government over Clinton’s emails.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/how-clintons-e...
I am no fan of the NSA, but the handling and sending/receiving of what was clearly classified info was clearly done.
http://observer.com/2016/03/hillary-has-an-nsa-problem/
(I am speaking to the wider issue, not the specific issue of 1 guy's email archive, as you also seem to be.)
* Blumenthal somehow got his hands on classified info from NSA
* He pulled some of that information into an email to Clinton's public email address
* Clinton at that point could have classified the email herself, or not. The information was not labeled as classified in that email.
The question there is how did Blumenthal get his hands on that information? That means there was some unauthorized disclosure on the NSA's end. The only way Clinton would be on the hook for that is if she solicited that information or knew about Blumenthal obtaining it illegally.
The argument can be made that she should've recognized that the email contained sensitive information and should be classified. But it is not a crime for someone with original classifying authority to decline to classify something that was labeled unclassified when it reached their hands.
The problem with your view is that it is not based on what the law actually is.
Clinton was required to report the unauthorized disclosure of classified info. But she didn't.
By your argument, if someone takes a photocopy of a document but puts a blank piece of paper over whatever mark indicates it as "top secret", whoever they then hand that photocopy to is excluded from any liability. That is not how it actually works, however.
BTW if the info came from NSA, they are the agency that determines its classification. Not Clinton.
If she knew the origin of the information, yes. It seems like no one is saying she knew where the information came or that it was classified. The argument can be made that she should have known but that's a more difficult thing to prove when it comes to holding people accountable.
> By your argument, if someone takes a photocopy of a document but puts a blank piece of paper over whatever mark indicates it as "top secret", whoever they then hand that photocopy to is excluded from any liability. That is not how it actually works, however.
It comes down to whether you know the nature of the information should have made something classified or the origin of the information should have made it classified. Certain types of information would clearly scream "Classified!" regardless of whether it was written on a napkin. Nuclear information, identities of covert operatives, military plans, terror intel, etc. would fall under that umbrella.
Other things aren't so clear cut. Information obtained from an intercept might not raise alarm bells if you didn't know the info came from an intercept. Then there are times when unclassified or sensitive information from multiple sources can combine to create a classified document. The individual pieces of info are not classified but the synthesis is. At that point one would have to rely on someone making the judgement call correctly.
> BTW if the info came from NSA, they are the agency that determines its classification. Not Clinton.
Yes they can classify the information upon its creation. But they could also release it as unclassified or sensitive, then down the line someone else could elevate it to Secret or Top Secret. That person could be anyone with original classifying authority like Clinton.
In this case, Blumenthal somehow got a hold of information that was classified from the NSA, then he made a derivative summary of it. He and whoever leaked the info should be on the hook for that. Clinton would only be on the hook if she knew the info was classified.
The information that was emailed to Clinton was sensitive but only supposedly from a classified source. There is no proof that it was, just accusations.
That's not clear at all.
http://www.archives.gov/records-mgmt/bulletins /2014/2014-06.html
False. Not on materials created by the CIA, NSA, etc. She would have no authority on those, and those are what everything is about.
She can't unilaterally declassify anything so if another agency sent something classified to her, she could not lower the classification.
If something came from one of the intelligence agencies that was Secret or Top Secret, it would not be sent over the open internet to her public email. That would be a security violation on the part of the sender.
Classified items were sent to her to her private email address. Her server, which she had setup for herself, contained those classified items. That is against the law. It is also against the law to handle classified items in a way that puts them at risk.
She is responsible for the content of her server, and therefore broke the law. That she somehow didn't recognize classified material isn't a defense. The people who sent her the classified materials also broke the law (especially since they may have removed any classified markings from the documents).
If something is not marked properly, the receiver doesn't automatically get a security violation.
The truth is like poetry and everyone hates poetry.
Was she subpoenaed before or after the deletion occurred?
If nobody can show she was subpoenaed before the deletion occurred, then you're still engaging in idle speculation.
Does that change your response?
Not necessarily. General Petraeus purposely handed over documents to his biographer / girlfriend, and he got nothing more than a slap on the wrist.
It seems again to be a high court / low court thing. If you're important enough, your crimes get you lesser sentences, but if not, they throw the book at you.
I think most people believe it's unlikely Clinton will serve any time for the email lapse; instead, she's considered the front-runner for the White House.
On the other hand, Snowden had to flee the country and, like Assange, he may never be able to set foot in a country with the relevant extradition treaties.
I think the high/low court point still stands.
You mean: Disclose that the intelligence apparatus is spying on its own citizens/taxpayers who pay their salaries?
There, fixed it for you.
> leaks of classified information to the press have relatively infrequently been punished as crimes, and we are aware of no case in which a publisher of information obtained through unauthorized disclosure by a government employee has been prosecuted for publishing it.
I am no Pro-Hilary person but I always ask for what and get weird remarks that never mean anything solid. They also don't know anything about the George W Bush's White House use of unoffical email.
[1] https://informedvote2016.wordpress.com/2016/03/18/do-i-reall...
People seem to treat it like hse email stuff directly to N. Korea and China on military instulations and nucealer weapon plans.
> All criminal laws require a certain level of intent and, in the area of classified document cases, the intent to disclose it to someone not authorized to receive it," says Lowell, who has a long history of defending politicians in ethics cases, and served as chief counsel to the House Democrats during Bill Clinton's impeachment proceedings. "Secretary Clinton's use of an email server was [for correspondence with] her own staff and other officials. It was not [intended to be provided] to the press or to a foreign country or any other entity, so it would be ridiculous [for her to] even be considered charged under these laws.
The emails also weren't classified at the time.
Information is born classified, markings are irrelevant. Clinton had to sign a document affirming her understanding of this in order to gain access to classified information in the first place.
As for the crimes she committed, here are a few good candidates:
1. Gross Negligence (doesn't require intent)
2. Espionage (requires knowledge you're compromising security; also chargeable as Gross Negligence)
3. Obstruction of justice
4. Perjury
5. Violation of the Federal Records Act
6. Violation of National Archive and Records Administration's regulations
7. Violation of Freedom of Information Act regulations
8. Materially False Statements to federal agents
9. Conspiracy (under 18 U.S. Code § 371)Exactly. I really wish the whole "it wasn't classified at the time" argument would die already.
Not sure what you mean by this. An enormous amount of effort is expended in government to mark classified and confidential documents properly, set their disposition dates, record who classified it and why, and so forth.
Classification is not just determined at the time of the creation of a document/artifact, it can be changed as a result of being coupled with other information, or by changes in circumstances, or simply by different readings of by different people.
The end being, proper handling.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classified_United_States_websi...
Yes, email classifications can be changed after the fact, but that in and of itself would not constitute wrongdoing by the Secretary. Colin Powell did exactly the same thing and wasn't punished after the fact either.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/03/us/politics/hillary-clinto...
Saying it was not considered sensitive at the time is exactly why the government defaults to sensitive and will change it later. Additionally, managing your own server off to the side when you are a high ranking government official just looks suspicious.
Can you be specific with what this means? I hear this comparison all the time yet it never seems to be articulated.
What did she do that would lead her to have been fired "on the spot"?
My understanding is that neither state.gov nor "Hillary email server" are "secure" for classified information. And it seems like over the course of investigating "Hillary email server" ~20 emails have been identified as containing information that should have been considered "Top Secret".
But that poses the question - why was that information being emailed around at all? Who sent it? Who is liable? How did it get on email systems connected to the open web?
Or is there just a certain level of classified information that is expected to be mishandled over the course of time?
And is this like information that is being directly copied from clearly classified reports? Or is this accidental references to topics that should not be discussed in email messages sent over the open web?
I imagine these are all questions are being confronted by the FBI. But it seems pretty common to encounter comments along the lines of yours: Hillary is definitely in the wrong and every one knows it. But I do not see that yet.
The problem with classified or even just sensitive information is that it is hard to know what is what. For example a list of naval ship names is likely not sensitive information. That same list with some grouping may suddenly be sensitive. For this reason, it is good to assume all government communications someone at that level is having are at a minimum sensitive and should always be on government property.
I understand somebody being paid by the Democratic party or one of Hillary's SuperPACs to try to push this argument, but for a regular citizen to attempt it shows just how successful the suggested partisanship of the US political system is in dividing regular citizens to act against their own best interests.
I mean, that's the only thing I can conclude. If you're assuming a priori that there's a crime, then you're putting the cart before the horse.
When you're assuming that counter points can only come from some sort of paid posters, you're being disrepectful.
This is why political topics are bad in HN. There's no news for nerds in here, just lots of people playing fast and loose with the facts to score political points.
then perhaps the reasonable thing to conclude is that it is not an act that somebody should go to jail for. I mean, that's the only thing I can conclude.
It's not a defense, it's a counter to the idea that "if anyone else did this, they'd be fired and charged". Obviously that's not true, because (as noted in the comment to which you replied) others did it and no one was fired or went to jail.
But Powell and Rice, occupying the same level of power as Clinton during her term, I understood it as a condemnation of the privileges of political power in general and not a privilege of a particular political party.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/03/us/politics/hillary-clinto...
Not really sure what the huge difference is in this case.
"Mrs. Clinton is not the first government official — or first secretary of state — to use a personal email account on which to conduct official business. But her exclusive use of her private email, for all of her work, appears unusual, Mr. Baron said. The use of private email accounts is supposed to be limited to emergencies, experts said, such as when an agency’s computer server is not working.
“I can recall no instance in my time at the National Archives when a high-ranking official at an executive branch agency solely used a personal email account for the transaction of government business,” said Mr. Baron, who worked at the agency from 2000 to 2013.
Regulations from the National Archives and Records Administration at the time required that any emails sent or received from personal accounts be preserved as part of the agency’s records.
But Mrs. Clinton and her aides failed to do so."
That is pretty much the most minor and least relevant issue with Clinton's case.
The State Department's review said they should have been classified at the time.
“These emails were not retroactively classified by the State Department. ... Rather these emails contained classified information when they were generated and, according to IC classification officials, that information remains classified today. This classified information should never have been transmitted via an unclassified personal system.”
That's from the inspector generals at the State Department.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-clinton-email...
Regardless of whether or not she is guilty, that flow of logic is deplorable and anyone who follows it is only contributing to the the problem of crooked politics. God damn American politics is fucked up.
I don't see why even your characterization of the situation is "deplorable." Let's accept that Clinton is a "criminal" -- that doesn't necessarily disqualify her for public office, so the question becomes whether it bothers voters enough to matter. Personally, I think Donald Trump would be the worst president in the history of the United States. I have lots of opinions about lots of politicians, but he's probably the only one that I'm genuinely scared of.
I'd prefer almost anybody over Trump -- that Clinton may have broken federal laws is just another bullet point in the pros/cons list. I'd have voted for Eugene Debs while he was literally in prison, and hundreds of thousands of people did.[1]
People bemoan the whole "lesser of two evils" thing, but I always wonder: What's the alternative? I'm not saying that I give up on improving the system, because there's a lot that could be improved. But "lesser of two evils" is just a negative way of saying "my preference."
Politicians have a zillion positions, you're never going to agree with one 100% -- and if you do, great, but that means there are literally millions of other people who don't. You pick the one who gets the government a step closer to what you want it to be.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_ele...
Why? You want another lawyer as president?
Think of Trump as what he is: a businessman becoming intimately familiar with national politics for the first time. He's being brought up to speed on almost every social topic under the sun. He doesn't have the lifetime of bias that most politicians have (e.g., 20 years of working in the House, Senate, or some federal bureaucracy).
He will be asking questions: crazy questions, dumb questions, smart questions, questions everyman asks.
If you never shuffle the cards then you'll always be dealt from a stacked deck. Trump will shuffle the cards. So it's like randomization/Monte Carlo in machine learning.
We've had decades of lawyers and professional politicians; let's give a real person a chance to be president. Personally I would have preferred a more common man, but I doubt others would have that, because we are primates with social hierarchies.
Trump will be like FDR: desperate to get something done and willing to try whatever it takes to do it but constrained by the law. I like that - it's the "American way"!
But I honestly think Biden could do the same thing, for different reasons, if he would only step out and speak for himself.
I'll avoid invoking Godwin's law, but that's a very dangerous thing to accept. I personally do not have any interest in voting for someone who does not believe in freedom of religion or speech. If elected, I genuinely fear for the continued legality of dissent.
His only saving grace is that he's probably going to be too ineffectual to get much done. That's what's terrifying about Clinton: she's overwhelmingly competent and completely amoral.
"Clinton: she's overwhelmingly competent and completely amoral."
Well, the email investigation would tend NOT to paint her as "overwhelmingly competent" in technical, legal or political senses. Whitewater paints her as a competent and skilled lawyer and quite able to walk a fine line.
I agree she's "completely amoral".
I don't view "incompetent + amoral" as good qualities for a president.
You're suggesting that the best way to fix american politics is to let trump burn it down, and build a new nation from the ashes?
Not at all true.
Joe Biden, "Trustworthy, loyal,... clean and reverent.", is standing in the wings. He is a more capable opponent for Trump than Hilary and would likely pull many conservatives, especially those who doubt Trump's creds, to the Democrat side.
The issue is that she was apparently told to use the .gov email address provided to her by her work, and she did this instead.
People have accused her of doing this for various reasons, but personally I don't believe there's evidence to show that she did this for any other reason than wanting to stand out and look special by sending mail from [email protected], and so that she could use her own BlackBerry.
The issue was and is only with her use of a privately run SMTP server for her government job. There's three key problems, first off it avoids FOIA requests, secondly it can avoid other legal discovery, and lastly information was sent through it of a sensitive nature.
And before someone replies with "nothing was sensitive!" if that were true then why has the government redacted and withheld emails from the public? And retroactive classification is largely a myth, things inherit classifications from their source.
So for example if you attend a classified meeting and you or your staff take notes on that meeting, those notes are classified at the second pen touched paper. It doesn't matter than it lacks a classification marking.
And that's for a lowly developer job dealing with absolutely no classified information.
You'd probably still catch some flak but you might have enough power/influence to actually do it whereas if you're employee #42593 of a big company there's no way in hell you're gonna get your way.
Similarly, Clinton will probably get away with it. That doesn't excuse her behavior though. Might does not make right.
Hopefully she'll keep that character flaw in check as president, but I wouldn't be surprised if she didn't.
Personally, I think [email protected] would be a much better vanity email address than <myname>email.com.
Even if the only reason was to have a custom domain, I'm sure the State Department's IT team could point the MX records to a government-managed mail server.
Also, at what point do you get upset about tax dollars being wasted to investigate something to death. Couldn't we be spending this money on better things?
Once a countries laws become negligible, the country ceases to exist.
At what point does an investigation become a witch hunt? At what point does an investigation become waste? I think were at that point (or just slightly past) it.
The investigation has revealed some rather alarming things about our government:
1. The government doesn't have it's shit together when it comes to archiving email. Go figure, we all knew there was waste there but this is worse than any decent nerd ever expected.
2. Our classification system is a mess. The fact that we can retroactively classify something is INSANE. Documents got out that you don't like, classify them, then prosecute any journalist who writes about them.
3. The number of people recently (not just in clintons case) who have immunity for testimony is amazing. In the case of clinton it looks like there was/is some wrongdoing on the part of the staffer who RECEIVED immunity. We all understand this is a prisoners dilemma problem, but there are external ethics that we don't often think about: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2378070 -- and this doesn't even factor in outside actors (us) who are harmed by the crime.
4. After Chelsea/Bradley Manning(see note) released all the cables, it apparently had ZERO impact on the IT culture at the state department. You would think that after an issue like that, things would have been on lockdown, but apparently government doesn't learn from its mistakes.
Why isn't any one screaming on high about these things?
NOTE: The whole gender and name change thing is confusing when referring to something done under/by the old name/gender so I put both down.
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/03/nsa-re...
“Each time we asked the question 'What was the solution for POTUS,' we were politely asked to shut up and color,” Donald Reid, State Department coordinator for security infrastructure, said in a 2009 email first obtained as part of a Freedom of Information Act request by the political action group Judicial Watch.
The woman asked for a workable solution, one that former SofS had access to and was told no. She asked what POTOUS had and was told NO, and instead offered something 1/2 assed at best.
There is also the question of a foundation staffer having highly compartmentalized data from the NSA... that is, to say the least, interesting as it apparently came from an "outside source". The story as it is being presented is NSA->leak-> Blumenthal -> clinton. One would think that this would have lead to a swift inditement of him (Blumenthal), yet nothing.
I suspect that there is a LOT more to this portion of the story that has NOTHING to do with Clinton, and it might make one want a tinfoil hat.
It is almost like she doesn't give a damn what you think. I'm beginning to not give a damn about her.
She remembered how the Republicans witch-hunted her before, and wanted to keep all her stuff under her control so they couldn't FOIA all her stuff.
I empathize with that. I really do. But there's no exception to FOIA for "the people who want the information are meanie heads."
Evidence of corruption.
Irrespective of your political leanings, what is the magic behind making emails disappear? Is it incompetence, gross-negligence. I think, its another standard DC "plausible deniability".
"In addition to the emails, the State Department also does not have any text messages or BlackBerry Messenger messages sent to or from Clinton during her time in office, the RNC claimed. The State Department declined to discuss that declaration."
I'm hardly a Clinton apologist, but I'd like to make sure, before I criticize her of something, that there is actually evidence.