Ray McGovern - Hillary Clinton's Damning Emails

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President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton honor the four victims of the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, at the Transfer of Remains Ceremony held at Andrews Air Force Base, Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, on Sept. 14, 2012. (State Department photo)
OpEdNews Op Eds 4/30/2016 at 11:25:59
Hillary Clinton's Damning Emails
By Ray McGovern      
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Hillary-Clinton-s-Damning-by-Ray-McGovern-Democrats_Email_Hillary-Clinton_NSA-160430-704.html
This piece was reprinted by OpEdNews with permission or license. It may not be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.

  "Reprinted from 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."
   
   
   Edward Snowden
   (image by Wikipedia (commons.wikimedia.org))   License   DMCA
   
   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.
   
   
   U.S. Army Pvt. Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning
   (image by Official photograph of Manning from the United States Army)   
   DMCA
   
   Prosecutorial Double Standards
   
   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."
   
   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.
   
   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.
   
   
   Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testifies before Congress on Jan.
   23, 2013, about the fatal attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi,
   Libya, on Sept. 11. 2012.
   (image by (Photo from C-SPAN coverage))   DMCA
   
   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.
   
   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 inner-city Washington. He was an
   Army infantry/intelligence officer and then a CIA analyst for 27 years,
   and is now on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals
   for Sanity (VIPS). His (more...) "