Saturday, May 28, 2016

Matt 24 watch, 292: MSNBC on Mrs Clinton's responses on the email scandal

IG REPORT. (Note Annenberg Public Policy Center fact check.)

Video, here:



Significant though painful, as while many in the Caribbean readily see Mr Trump as questionable, there is a reflexive tendency to support the Democratic Party and its spokespeople or leadership.

Clip 1, a cite from the Washington Post:



Clip 2, continuing:




Clip 3, further:



The use of a server itself may not be technically illegal (I am in no position to contradict WaPo on that), but the reckless exposure of patently secret information and by implication of sources and methods very likely violates any number of laws and regulations with force of law on security. It also recklessly exposed security personnel to undue risk of life and limb in very dangerous corners of the world. 

Which is exactly what the mis-handled Benghazi matter is about, also.

Guy Benson of Townhall observes:
The only half-hearted defense floated in the entire segment comes not from Hillary supporter Mika Brzezinski, but by a Politico reporter, who suggests that perhaps not adhering to some email rules really isn't that big of a deal in the scheme of things. What this point completely misses, as Joe Scarborough points out, is the consequences of Hillary's deliberate failure to follow those rules or alter her behavior in the face of serious warnings. Because she used her unsecure bootleg server exclusively for all of her email use, she trafficked in thousands of classified emails -- including dozens at the secret, top secret and above top secret. That's the biggest reason the Powell comparison is fundamentally dishonest. In the extremely likely event that her server was penetrated by foreign hackers (the new report reveals Hillary's email guru being forced to shut down the server because it was under sustained malicious attack), hostile actors have all of that information. Information that the State Department deemed so sensitive and potentially harmful to US interests that they declined to release 22 emails in any form whatsoever, even with heavy redactions. That's the point here. National security. Hillary's arrogance is obnoxious, of course, but the stakes here are much higher than that.
Benson, in the further article on the Powell comparison, first cites Politico:
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell said the FBI has contacted him about his use of personal email when he was the nation's top diplomat, as a review conducted by the State Department inspector general concluded that Powell and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice both received classified information through private email accounts...The State Department inquiry identified 10 messages sent to Rice's immediate staff that were classified and two sent to Powell, according to Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the ranking member on the House Oversight and Benghazi committees. The emails, Cummings said, appear to have no classification markings, and it is still unclear if the content of the emails was or should have been considered classified when the emails were originally written and sent. In an interview with POLITICO Thursday. Powell vigorously disputed the sensitivity of the information sent to him through personal email, but he acknowledged the law enforcement interest in his email routine. "The FBI has come to us," Powell said. Two FBI agents visited Powell in December for a discussion an aide described as a casual conversation about email practices during his term as secretary from 2001 to 2005...Powell seemed exasperated by State's latest claim. The agency has designated the two messages "Confidential," which is the lowest tier of classification. "Now, 11 or 12 years later, as part of a whole process of reviewing things somebody in the department says, 'Well, they're classified.' My response to that is no they were not," Powell said. " You can say your judgment is they should have been classified but at the time they were not classified.
He then comments:
(1) Yesterday evening, Hillary said, "I never sent or received any classified material," without her (legally irrelevant) "marked" caveat. This is a flat falsehood. It is an established fact that she personally sent and received classified material. The State Department's review has discovered more than 1,600 classified emails on her server thus far, with another batch still outstanding -- to say nothing of the 32,000 messages she unilaterally deleted, some of which we now know did pertain to official business.
(2) She also blames this controversy on the issue of retroactive classification, which Powell complains about, too. This gripe may apply to some of Hillary's emails, and to both of Powell's, but Hillary is being deeply disingenuous here. The nonpartisan IC Inspector General has determined that a number of her classified emails were absolutely classified at the time they originated, including top secret and beyond-top-secret intelligence. There was nothing "retroactive" about these classifications. News organizations have also confirmed that scores of her emails were, in fact, classified at the time. It was her duty to identify and protect highly sensitive information, regardless of markings . . . . 

(3) "See? Condi and Colin did it, too!" relies on a thoroughly bogus equivalency.  Above all else, neither Rice nor Powell set up and used a recklessly unsecure private emails server on which they conducted all of their official business, against "clear cut rules" implemented in 2005.  (A former CIA director and Secretary of Defense have each stated that her vulnerable server was likely penetrated by foreign powers like the Russians and Chinese).  This review identified ten -- total -- emails that have now been assigned retroactive, low-level classification levels.  Only two of them went to then-Secretary of State Powell, with the others going to Rice's aides, and both of those are now classified at the lowest level ("confidential").  As mentioned above, Hillary's server contained 1,600 classified emails and counting, including the most sensitive level of intelligence in existence (SAP, beyond-top-secret).  There is no comparison between the conduct of Hillary Clinton and that of her immediate predecessors.  Beyond her exclusive use of an improper and unsecure server, Sec. Clinton was personally and specifically warned about the vulnerability of her email scheme in 2011, when a State Department security expert sounded the alarm over foreign hackers seeking to infiltrate US secrets by targeting high-ranking officials' private emails.  Mrs. Clinton carried on with her arrangement anyway.
Benson has a TV exchange with Bernard Whitman on this general topic:



It seems there is sobering Ac 27 case study on democracy- turned- manipulated- march- of- folly food for thought here. END

PS: Fox's Hannity Show on the issues of Clinton making it to be the nominee of her party:



(The show also begins with clips from Trump's speech on making it past the 1,237 first ballot number, showing his rhetorical tactics and general manner. Notice how he tries to put down others by waving his post-it note of his main speech points, by contrast with those who use teleprompters [by implication including President Obama]; something he may live to regret should he ever have to use same. Likewise, I could not but observe "Imm-EYE-gration." Someone talked of "the election from hell" and that may be the most inadvertently insightful point of all.)

  Further food for thought.