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?
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.