Clinton
Approved CIA Drone Assassinations With Her Cellphone,
Report Says
WSJ: FBI is investigating Hillary's classified
emails on State Dept. approval of CIA drone killings
in Pakistan
By Ben Norton
June 11, 2016
"Information
Clearing House"
- "Salon"
-
The FBI has
been conducting a criminal investigation into
Hillary Clinton’s handling of classified information
for months.
An
explosive new report reveals just what it is that
the FBI is looking to: emails in which
then-Secretary of State Clinton approved CIA drone
assassinations in Pakistan with her cellphone.
From 2011
on, the State Department had a secret arrangement
with the CIA, giving it a degree of say over whether
or not a drone killing would take place.
The U.S.
drone program has killed hundreds of civilians in
Pakistan and other countries.
Under Sec.
Clinton, State Department officials approved almost
every single proposed CIA drone assassination. They
only objected to one or two attacks.
The emails
that are at the heart of the FBI’s criminal
investigation are 2011 and 2012 messages between
U.S. diplomats in Pakistan and their State
Department superiors in D.C., in which the officials
approved drone strikes.
Clinton’s
aides forwarded some of these emails to her personal
email account, on a private server in her home in
suburban New York.
These are
the revelations of a
report by The Wall Street Journal, based on
information provided by anonymous congressional and
law-enforcement officials who were briefed on the
FBI’s probe.
The State
Department revealed in January that 22 of the emails
that were on Clinton’s private server at her home
contained top-secret information. These messages
were not publicly released, and an investigation was
eventually launched.
The White
House
acknowledged in a press briefing on Thursday
that the FBI probe into Clinton’s handling of
classified information is a “criminal
investigation.” President Obama endorsed Clinton for
president on the same day.
Hundreds of civilians
in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan and more
have been killed by U.S. drones.
Pakistan is
the site of more U.S. drone strikes than any other
country. The Obama administration has carried out
more than 370 drone attacks in Pakistan, killing as
many as 1,000 civilians, including up to 200
children, according to data collected by the Bureau
of Investigative Journalism.
The exact
number of civilians killed is unknown, because the
U.S. is very secretive about its program, and
because it
essentially redefines militant to mean any man
of military age in a targeted area.
In 2011,
some Pakistani officials pushed back against the
U.S. drone assassination program, leading the U.S.
State Department to ask the CIA to be more
“judicious” about the timing of drone attacks.
Clinton’s State Department did not oppose the CIA’s
specific choice of targets, just their timing.
This led to
a compromise in which the CIA gave the State
Department some voice in the drone assassination
process. Beginning in 2011, CIA officers began
notifying diplomats in the U.S. embassy in Islamabad
of planned attacks. The diplomats then conveyed the
information to senior State Department officials.
This
agreement gave then-Secretary of State Clinton and
her aides personal say in U.S. drone killings.
The Wall
Street Journal report provides more insight into the
State Department’s coordination with the CIA on the
secretive drone program.
State
Department officials were given notice before a
planned attack, sometimes with a narrow timeframe of
as few as 30 minutes. Officials told the FBI that
they used a less-secure system of communication when
they had to make a decision quickly before a drone
killing and were not at the office.
Roughly
half a dozen times, State Department officials sent
emails on their smartphones in order to approve a
drone assassination when they were away from secure
communications systems.
The U.S. is
very secretive about its covert CIA drone campaign.
Strict U.S. classification rules bar officials from
discussing drone killings publicly and outside of
secure communications systems.
Given this
secrecy, law-enforcement and intelligence officials
told the Journal that State Department discussion of
the covert CIA drone program should have been
conducted via a more secure communications system.
The
criminal investigation into Clinton’s emails has
often been a right-wing talking point, but the
scandal has much wider implications.
Reflecting on the Journal’s report,
award-winning journalist Jeremy Scahill, one
of the world’s leading experts on the
secretive CIA drone program,
commented, “So many liberals poo poo the
Hillary email scandal for totally partisan
reasons. If it was a Republican, they would
be going bananas.”
“People claiming emails on Hillary’s private
server were not classified do not understand
how classification works,” Scahill
added. “It’s an HRC talking point.”
“It’s acceptable to mishandle classified
info on your bathroom server and share
classified info with your mistress, just
don’t blow any whistles,” he
quipped, referencing the fact that the
Obama administration has waged an
unprecedentedly harsh crackdown on
whistleblowers.
The
FBI is expected to interview Clinton this
summer about the scandal. Law-enforcement
officials told the Journal they don’t think
criminal charges will be filed against her
after the investigation.
Clinton herself has repeatedly confidently
insisted that she is not going to be
charged.
State Department spokesman Mark Toner
refused to speak about the emails or the
investigation.
Ben Norton is a politics staff writer at
Salon. You can find him on Twitter at
@BenjaminNorton.
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