Sunday, January 10, 2016

New Clinton Emails Show Mixed Concerns on Security of Information

I breezed past some article about Hillary's email dump late Friday. I caught the end of George Stephanopolis' show and someone mentioned it contained security violation that he expected her to be indicted on as a felony. I searched in the New York Times iPad app and found no article on the topic. I searched on my mac and found this (I wonder why that is New York Times?)

The New York Times wrote New Clinton Emails Show Mixed Concerns on Security of Information

On a Friday morning in June 2011, after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had waited more than 12 hours for a set of talking points to be sent to her, a top aide told her the delay was because staff members were having problems sending faxes that would be secure from probing eyes.

‘If they can’t, turn into nonpaper w no identifying heading and send nonsecure,’ Mrs. Clinton responded in an email released early Friday by the State Department, one of about 3,000 newly released pages of Mrs. Clinton’s emails during her time as secretary of state. Of those, 66 documents contained classified information.

The note she sent to the top aide, Jacob J. Sullivan, instructing him how to strip sensitive material of official markings and send it in a ‘nonsecure’ way is heavily redacted, so it is unknown what the talking points were about."

That does kinda seem pretty damning.

ABC followed up, More Detail, New Questions About 2011 Clinton Email.

And on Saturday, a State Department official who wasn't authorized to speak publicly on the increasingly complicated review of Clinton's emails said the agency "checked its records and found no indication that the document in question was sent to Secretary Clinton using nonsecure fax or email."

The official, who demanded anonymity, said records instead turned up a secure fax transmission shortly after Clinton's email exchange with adviser Jake Sullivan on June 17, 2011. The implication was that this was the same document.

While the review appears to rule out the possibility of Clinton improperly receiving sensitive material, it leaves other questions unanswered.

Was the document classified or unclassified? The State Department won't say.

And was Clinton wrong to instruct a senior aide to send it through nonsecure means, even if that request wasn't fulfilled? The department says it isn't making a judgment.

Even the subject matter hasn't been revealed.

HotAir might be the first report of the issue and they seem to be pretty good about updating with some new info (though not the ABC News report above). Whoa: Hillary e-mail instructs aide to transmit classified data without markings

Face the Nation interview Hillary this morning and asked her about this. Paraphrasing, she said the aide was known to be meticulous and knew that she meant to send whatever unclassified parts could be sent. She repeated that the State Department has said that nothing classified on the topic was sent. I guess it's a fine answer, but I didn't find it convincing because of the language she used in the message doesn't match what she says her intent was. John Dickerson said the FBI is investigating this matter.

3 comments:

AAM said...

Aren't Talking points by definition not classified?

Howard said...

You would think the points are, but they could be based on classified stuff. Look, I'm not likely to believe stuff from a crappy conservative site like HotAir, but I was surprised when watching This Week that some panelist brought it up, said it was a clear felony (paraphrased slightly) and Stephanopolis didn't challenge him in the slightest. Now I haven't watched any of the Sunday morning shows in months and I don't feel like I missed anything but this going by unquestioned seemed odd to me.

And whether or not it was ultimately transmitted non-securely seems secondary. Her instructions are detailed enough to suggest she'd done it before. They also seem at odds with other of her emails that suggested she didn't understand how to use a fax (I wonder about the time difference of those). It wouldn't surprise me that in such an environment the security systems were so annoying and so broad that people routinely bypassed them but that doesn't make it legal.

AAM said...

If your surprised at anyone in the media not challenging something someone says that is wrong you don't watch a lot of TV.