>From the beginning, the “scandal” about Clinton using a personal email account when she was secretary of state—including the finding that a few documents on it were retroactively deemed classified ---------
This piece of bullshit is clearly not worth going any further, as this statement is a BLATANT LIE (and one of many that Hillary told time and time again). On Tuesday, July 19, 2016 at 2:54:46 PM UTC-4, plainolamerican wrote: > > In 2007, when Congress asked the Bush administration for emails > surrounding the firing of eights U.S. attorneys, Attorney General Alberto > Gonzales revealed that many of the emails requested could not be produced > because they were sent on a non-government email server. The officials had > used the private domain gwb43.com, a server run by the Republican > National Committee. Two years later, it was revealed that potentially 22 > million emails were deleted, which was considered by some to be a violation > of the Presidential Records Act. > > The shocking truth about the last two Republican secretaries of state has > finally come out: Colin Powell and aides to Condoleezza Rice trafficked in > classified information on their personal email accounts. This is an > enormous scandal! > > Oh, wait. No, it’s not. > > Try Newsweek for only $1.25 per week <http://www.newsweek.com/trial> > > This news involving Powell and Rice is meaningless except that it sets up > a rational conversation (finally) about the Hillary Clinton bogus > “email-gate” imbroglio. Perhaps the partisans on each side will now be more > willing to listen to the facts. From the beginning, the “scandal” about > Clinton using a personal email account when she was secretary of > state—including the finding that a few documents on it were retroactively > deemed classified—has been a big nothing-burger perpetuated for partisan > purposes, with reports spooned out by Republicans attempting to deceive or > acting out of ignorance. Conservative commentators have raged, presidential > candidates have fallen over themselves in apoplectic babbling, and some > politicians have proclaimed that Clinton should be in jail for mishandling > classified information. The nonsense has been never-ending, and attempts to > cut through the fog of duplicity have been fruitless. > > But Powell and Rice’s aides did nothing wrong. (I’m going to focus on them > so that partisans who say Clinton broke the law have to attack respected > Republicans first.) Start with this: Powell and Rice, like all modern > secretaries of state, each had at least two email accounts—one personal and > the other for communications designated as highly classified *at the time > of their creation* . For classified information, both of them—and their > aides with appropriate clearance—had a sensitive compartmented information > facility, or what is known in intelligence circles as a SCIF. Most senior > officials who deal with classified information have a SCIF in their offices > and their homes. > > These are not just extra offices with a special lock. Each SCIF is > constructed following complex rules imposed by the intelligence and defense > communities. Restrictions imposed on the builders are designed to ensure > that no unauthorized personnel can get into the room, and the SCIF cannot > be accessed by hacking or electronic eavesdropping. A group called the > technical surveillance countermeasures team (TSCM) investigates the area or > activity to check that all communications are protected from outside > surveillance and cannot be intercepted. > > SPONSORED BYNEXTADVISOR > <http://eb2.3lift.com/pass?imp_id=1468954401_514779965_8359&redir=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nextadvisor.com%2Fblog%2F2015%2F04%2F02%2Fpay-interest-2017-credit-cards%2F%3Fkw%3Dtlift_dsk_paynoint17-1-3%2Bwww.newsweek.com> > > <http://eb2.3lift.com/pass?imp_id=1468954401_514779965_8359&redir=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nextadvisor.com%2Fblog%2F2015%2F04%2F02%2Fpay-interest-2017-credit-cards%2F%3Fkw%3Dtlift_dsk_paynoint17-1-3%2Bwww.newsweek.com>CARDS > > WITH 0% APR UNTIL 2017 > <http://eb2.3lift.com/pass?imp_id=1468954401_514779965_8359&redir=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nextadvisor.com%2Fblog%2F2015%2F04%2F02%2Fpay-interest-2017-credit-cards%2F%3Fkw%3Dtlift_dsk_paynoint17-1-3%2Bwww.newsweek.com> > > Most permanent SCIFs have physical and technical security, called TEMPEST. > The facility is guarded and in operation 24 hours a day, seven days a week; > any official on the SCIF staff must have the highest security clearance. > There is supposed to be sufficient personnel continuously present to > observe the primary, secondary and emergency exit doors of the SCIF. Each > SCIF must apply fundamental red-black separation to prevent the inadvertent > transmission of classified data over telephone lines, power lines or signal > lines. > > I could keep going for thousands and thousands of words explaining the > security measures used for SCIFs. And all of this— *all *of this—is > designed to protect the confidentiality of emails and communications > determined to be classified at the time of transmission. > > In addition to the classified email system used in SCIFs, there are > personal email accounts. Prior to 2013, these could be accounts inside the > relatively unsecure State Department system or private email accounts. If > they are private—running through a commercial or personal server—they have > to follow some rules set up in the *Federal Register* . There are no > guards, no red-black procedures, no construction rules, no special rooms, > no TEMPEST, no TSCM. And most important: Until 2013, there was no rule > against using them. In fact, the rules specifically allowed for them. Check > out the relevant section in the Code of Federal Regulations (36 CFR Chapter > XII, Subchapter B, section 1236.22b) for the rules regarding the use of > personal email accounts by any State Department official. > > To give an idea of *how *insecure these communications could be, Powell’s > personal email is an AOL account, and he used it on a laptop when he > communicated with foreign officials and ambassadors, unless the information > qualified for a SCIF. (Clinton sent only one email to a foreign dignitary > through her personal account, and her communications with ambassadors were, > for the most part, by phone.) > > So did Powell and the aides to Rice violate rules governing classified > information, since the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) staff has recently > determined that some of their years-old personal emails contain top-secret > material? No. The rules regarding the handling of classified information > apply to communications designated as secret *at that time* . If > documents that aren’t deemed classified, and aren’t handled through a SCIF > when they are created or initially transmitted, are later, in retrospect, > deemed secret, the classification is new—and however the record was handled > in the past is irrelevant. > > There is also an enormous difference between a secretary of state sending > an email to someone inside the department and that same email being > released to the general public. Put simply, as anyone who has filed a > request for a document under the FOIA knows, not every email or other item > can be handed out, even if it was not originally deemed to be so > confidential that it required SCIF procedures. The determination of what > State Department documents can be publicly released is handled by the FOIA > staff, both in the State Department and, when deemed appropriate, by > officials with the same duties in the intelligence community. In fact, the > entire issue right now regarding the emails of every secretary of state > concerns which ones can be released under the FOIA. People outraged by the > (false) belief that Powell and Rice’s aides broke the law are creating a > fantasy world where every official email, no matter its content, must go > through a SCIF just in case the FOIA staff eventually determines, sometime > in the future and applying different standards, that the information in the > email should not be released to the public under a FOIA request out of > classification concerns. Given the cumbersome procedures of using a SCIF, > that would mean the secretary of state would have to spend a lot of time > sitting inside a locked box and sending emails not yet designated as > containing secret information, solely to avoid the partisan gnashing of > teeth that could potentially occur if someday the FOIA staff were to > retroactively decide they should not be released to the public out of > classification concerns. > > Which brings us to the next most important issue here: classification. > Members of Congress should—and probably do—know this, but the public > apparently doesn’t. Just because the FOIA staff decides a document is top > secret doesn’t mean it contains information of any import. (It’s widely > known that, even in the creation of a document, the government > over-classifies information, meaning communications are deemed secret that > don’t need to be, but that’s another issue.) The FOIA staff is supposed to > be extra-cautious when releasing a document to the public. As I mentioned > in a previous column, that is why anyone wanting to obtain a document > should file multiple FOIA requests for the information—one staffer might > deem something secret that another staffer releases without concern. In > fact, if someone were to submit a FOIA request for every email in the State > Department that has been sent over a system without the extreme protections > reserved for information determined to be top secret on creation, there is > no doubt that the FOIA staff would call many of the emails classified and > refuse the request. > > Plus, both Powell and Rice had the authority, granted by President George > W. Bush through executive order, to classify and declassify any document > created by the State Department. So if either of them had received an email > from another agency containing information that had not gone through a > SCIF, he or she could have independently declared that it did not need to > be secret and sent it along to anyone they chose. > > In other words, just because the FOIA staff years later labeled emails > sent from Powell and Rice’s aides as classified does *not *mean those > records contain some crown jewels of critical intelligence. In fact, > usually they are quite benign. I have seen emails called “top secret” that > contained nothing more than a forwarded news article that had been > published. (The Associated Press has reported that one of Clinton’s > “secret” emails contains an AP article.) > > Then there is the issue of servers. Where did Powell and Rice’s staff have > their servers? Who knows, and who cares? Maybe they were private with > special security and no public access. Or maybe they were just an AOL > server. Whichever it was, they would be just as open to hacking as the > State Department servers. In fact, the State Department general email > system has been hacked multiple times, with terabytes of information > improperly downloaded in 2006 alone. There has been no indication that the > email accounts of either Powell or Rice’s staff were compromised. > > Powell may have made one mistake in all this. He has said he never backed > up his emails or printed them out; that was necessary to comply with some > of the preservation rules detailed in the *Federal Register*. Of course, > that doesn’t mean they can’t be recovered, since the FOIA staff is now > reviewing his emails. > > The bottom line: Democrats may try to turn the revelations about the email > accounts used by Powell and Rice’s staff into a scandal. They may release > press statements condemning the former secretaries of state; they may call > for scores of unnecessary congressional hearings; they may go to the press > and confidently proclaim that crimes were committed by these honorable > Republicans. But it would all be lies. Powell and Rice did nothing wrong. > This could be considered a scandal only by ignorant or lying partisans. > > So there is no Powell or Rice email scandal. And no doubt, that will > infuriate the Republicans who are trying so hard to trick people into > believing Clinton committed a crime by doing the exact same thing as her > predecessors. > > On Tuesday, July 19, 2016 at 1:34:02 PM UTC-5, Perplexed wrote: >> >> >> http://dailycaller.com/2016/07/19/hillary-admits-email-scandal-hurt-her/ >> >> OMG there is simply no end to this woman's lies! >> >> She actually claims at the end she did nothing more than previous >> Secretaries of State had done and blamed it on her subordinates. She also >> claims that Comey clarified remarks in his testimony to Congress that she >> seems to think resulted in him saying she wasn't "extremely careless". >> >> How can democrats vote for such a deluded, lying POS??? >> > -- -- Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups. For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum * Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/ * It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls. * Read the latest breaking news, and more. --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "PoliticalForum" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
