Hillary Clinton’s Damning Emails
Before the Democrats lock in their
choice for President, they might want to
know if Hillary Clinton broke the law
with her unsecure emails and may be
indicted, a question that ex-CIA analyst
Ray McGovern addresses.
By Ray McGovern
May 01, 2016 "Information
Clearing House"
- "Consortium
News"
- A few weeks after leaving
office, former Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton may have breathed a sigh
of relief and reassurance when Director
of National Intelligence James Clapper
denied reports of the National Security
Agency eavesdropping on Americans. After
all, Clinton had been handling official
business at the State Department like
many Americans do with their
personal business, on an unsecured
server.
In
sworn testimony before the Senate
Intelligence Committee on March 12,
2013, Clapper said the NSA was
not collecting, wittingly, “any
type of data at all on millions or
hundreds of millions of Americans,”
which presumably would have covered
Clinton’s unsecured emails.
But NSA contractor Edward Snowden’s
revelations — starting on June 5, 2013 —
gave the lie to Clapper’s testimony,
which Clapper then retracted on June 21
– coincidentally, Snowden’s 30th
birthday – when Clapper sent a letter to
the Senators to whom he had, well,
lied. Clapper admitted his “response was
clearly erroneous – for which I
apologize.” (On the chance you are
wondering what became of Clapper, he is
still DNI.)
I
would guess that Clapper’s confession
may have come as a shock to then
ex-Secretary Clinton, as she became
aware that her own emails might be among
the trillions of communications that NSA
was vacuuming up. Nevertheless, she
found Snowden’s truth-telling a safer
target for her fury than Clapper’s
dishonesty and NSA’s dragnet.
In
April 2014, Clinton suggested that
Snowden had helped terrorists by giving
“all kinds of information, not only to
big countries, but to networks and
terrorist groups and the like.” Clinton
was particularly hard on Snowden for
going to China (Hong Kong) and Russia to
escape a vengeful prosecution by the
U.S. government.
Clinton even
explained what extraordinary lengths
she and her people went to in
safeguarding government secrets: “When I
would go to China or would go to Russia,
we would leave all my electronic
equipment on the plane with the
batteries out, because … they’re
trying to find out not just about what
we do in our government, they’re … going
after the personal emails of people who
worked in the State Department.” Yes,
she said that. (emphasis added)
Hoisted on Her Own Petard
Alas, nearly a year later, in March
2015, it became known that during her
tenure as Secretary of State she had not
been as diligent as she led the American
people to believe. She had used a
private server for official
communications, rather than the usual
official State Department email accounts
maintained on federal servers. Thousands
of those emails would retroactively be
marked classified – some at the TOP
SECRET/Codeword level – by the
department.
During
an interview last September, Snowden
was asked to respond to the revelations
about highly classified material showing
up on Clinton’s personal server: “When
the unclassified systems of the United
States government, which has a full-time
information security staff, regularly
gets hacked, the idea that someone
keeping a private server in the
renovated bathroom of a server farm in
Colorado is more secure is completely
ridiculous.”
Asked if Clinton “intentionally
endangered US international security by
being so careless with her email,”
Snowden said it was not his place to
say. Nor, it would seem, is it President
Barack Obama’s place to say, especially
considering that the FBI is actively
investigating Clinton’s security
breach. But Obama has said it anyway.
“She would never intentionally put
America in any kind of jeopardy,” the
President said on April 10. In the same
interview, Obama told Chris Wallace, “I
guarantee that there is no political
influence in any investigation conducted
by the Justice Department, or the FBI –
not just in this case, but in any case.
Full stop. Period.”
But, although a former professor of
Constitutional law, the President sports
a checkered history when it comes to
prejudicing investigations and even
trials, conducted by those ultimately
reporting to him. For example, more than
two years before Bradley (Chelsea)
Manning was brought to trial, the
President stated publicly: “We are a
nation of laws. We don’t let individuals
make decisions about how the law
operates. He [Bradley Manning] broke the
law!”
Not surprisingly, the ensuing court
martial found Manning guilty, just as
the Commander in Chief had predicted.
Though Manning’s purpose in disclosing
mostly low-level classified information
was to alert the American public about
war crimes and other abuses by the U.S.
government, Manning was sentenced to 35
years in prison.
On
March 9, when presidential candidate
Clinton was asked, impertinently during
a debate, whether she would withdraw
from the race if she were indicted for
her cavalier handling of government
secrets, she offered her own certain
prediction: “Oh, for goodness sake! It’s
not going to happen. I’m not even
answering that question.”
Prosecutorial Double Standards
Merited or not, there is, sadly, some
precedent for Clinton’s supreme
confidence. Retired General and ex-CIA
Director David Petraeus, after all, lied
to the FBI (a felony for “lesser” folks)
about giving his mistress/biographer
highly classified information and got
off with a slap on the wrist, a
misdemeanor fine and probation, no jail
time – a deal that Obama’s first
Attorney General Eric Holder did on his
way out the door.
We
are likely to learn shortly whether
Attorney General Loretta Lynch is as
malleable as Holder or whether she will
allow FBI Director James Comey, who held
his nose in letting Petraeus cop a plea,
to conduct an unfettered investigation
this time – or simply whether Comey will
be compelled to enforce Clinton’s
assurance that “it’s not going to
happen.”
Last week, Fox News TV legal commentator
Andrew Napolitano said the FBI is in the
final stages of its investigation into
Clinton and her private email
server. His sources tell him that “the
evidence of her guilt is overwhelming,”
and that the FBI has enough evidence to
indict and convict.
Whether Napolitano has it right or not,
it seems likely that Clinton is reading
President Obama correctly – no profile
in courage is he. Nor is Obama likely to
kill the political fortunes of the now
presumptive Democratic presidential
nominee. Yet, if he orders Lynch and
Comey not to hold Hillary Clinton
accountable for what – in my opinion and
that of most other veteran intelligence
officials whom I’ve consulted – amounts
to at least criminal negligence, another
noxious precedent will be set.
Knowing Too Much
This time, however, the equities and
interests of the powerful, secretive
NSA, as well as the FBI and Justice, are
deeply involved. And by now all of them
know “where the bodies are buried,” as
the smart folks inside the Beltway like
to say. So the question becomes would a
future President Hillary Clinton have
total freedom of maneuver if she were
beholden to those all well aware of her
past infractions and the harm they have
done to this country.
One very important, though as yet
unmentioned, question is whether
security lapses involving Clinton and
her emails contributed to what Clinton
has deemed her worst moment as Secretary
of State, the killing of Ambassador
Christopher Stevens and three other U.S.
personnel at the lightly guarded U.S.
“mission” (a very small, idiosyncratic,
consulate-type complex not performing
any consular affairs) in Benghazi,
Libya, on Sept. 11, 2012.
Somehow the terrorists who mounted the
assault were aware of the absence of
meaningful security at the facility,
though obviously there were other means
for them to have made that
determination, including the State
Department’s reliance on unreliable
local militias who might well have
shared that inside information with the
attackers.
However, if there is any indication that
Clinton’s belatedly classified emails
contained information about internal
State Department discussions regarding
the consulate’s security shortcomings,
questions may be raised about whether
that information was somehow compromised
by a foreign intelligence agency and
shared with the attackers.
We
know that State Department bureaucrats
under Secretary Clinton overruled
repeated requests for additional
security in Benghazi. We also know that
Clinton disregarded NSA’s repeated
warnings against the use of unencrypted
communications. One of NSA’s core
missions, after all, is to create and
maintain secure communications for
military, diplomatic, and other
government users.
Clinton’s flouting of the rules, in
NSA’s face, would have created
additional incentive for NSA to keep an
especially close watch on her emails and
telephone calls. The NSA also might know
whether some intelligence service
successfully hacked into Clinton’s
server, but there’s no reason to think
that the NSA would share that sort of
information with the FBI, given the
NSA’s history of not sharing its data
with other federal agencies even when
doing so makes sense.
The NSA arrogates to itself the
prerogative of deciding what information
to keep within NSA walls and what to
share with the other intelligence and
law enforcement agencies like the
FBI. (One bitter consequence of this
jealously guarded parochialism was the
NSA’s failure to share very precise
information that could have thwarted the
attacks of 9/11, as former NSA insiders
have revealed.)
It
is altogether likely that Gen. Keith
Alexander, head of NSA from 2005 to
2014, neglected to tell the Secretary of
State of NSA’s “collect it all” dragnet
collection that included the emails and
telephone calls of Americans – including
Clinton’s. This need not have been
simply the result of Alexander’s pique
at her disdain for communications
security requirements, but rather mostly
a consequence of NSA’s modus operandi.
With the mindset at NSA, one could
readily argue that the Secretary of
State – and perhaps the President
himself – had no “need-to-know.” And,
needless to say, the fewer briefed on
the NSA’s flagrant disregard for Fourth
Amendment protections against
unreasonable searches and seizures the
better.
So, if there is something incriminating
– or at least politically damaging – in
Clinton’s emails, it’s a safe bet that
at least the NSA and maybe the FBI, as
well, knows. And that could make life
difficult for a Clinton-45 presidency.
Inside the Beltway, we don’t say the
word “blackmail,” but the potential will
be there. The whole thing needs to be
cleaned up now before the choices for
the next President are locked in.
Ray McGovern works
with Tell the Word,
the publishing arm
of the ecumenical
Church of the
Saviour in
Washington, DC.
During his career as
a CIA analyst, he
prepared and briefed
the President's
Daily Brief and
chaired National
Intelligence
Estimates. He is a
member of the
Steering Group of
Veteran Intelligence
Professionals for
Sanity (VIPS).
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News