No one thinks she's going to be made to suffer formal legal penalties. She is obviously above the law. But there's law, and then there's bureaucracy. So a question for all of you keeping score at home: Will Hillary Clinton lose her security clearance?
Her clearance is doubtless inactive because she has been out of the government for a while, but it is doubtless a clearance of the highest level: TS/SCI, for Top Secret, Sensitive Compartmentalized Information. It happens that I know quite a bit about what is involved in obtaining and maintaining such a clearance. There is not a doubt in my mind that any normal person found to have passed classified information through their un-secure private email would be stripped of their clearance that afternoon, and would probably never be adjudicated eligible again.
There is no formal requirement that someone standing for President has to be eligible for a security clearance, of course. She will still be given access to anything at all in spite of being ineligible. Further, Mrs. Clinton is at the end of her public career: if she is not elected President, she will not serve in any other capacity.
Thus, there is no reason not to enforce standards in the usual way. Does anyone think that will happen?
"At this point, what difference does it make?"
ReplyDeleteThe Federal Government seems to be not just unresponsive to the people, but actively working at the behest of unknown powers.
Another thought experiment: if she were a conservative, what are the odds that her security clearance would be stripped and the fact would be leaked to the press?
ReplyDeleteNo I do not believe she will face any consequences she should for this. And she would be prosecuted by the administration if she were a conservative. Oh, and the press would have nightly updates on the scandal.
ReplyDeleteDoes anyone think most voters will even hear about this, no matter what steps are taken? Admittedly, the NYT is starting to do some cautious reporting, but I hardly think it's going to get "Bush drunk-driving record" treatment on the network news channels. Or even Rubio "yacht-mansion" coverage.
ReplyDeleteNow, if Donald Trump takes to talking about it, that might be different. The only (limited) use I have for the man is that he has a bullier pulpit than other Republican(ish) types, because he's a bona fide TV personality, and because he can buy and/or provoke all the publicity he wants. If he starts saying Hillary Clinton is a Russian spy who bites the heads off live puppies on live TV, lots of low-information voters may disbelieve him, but they'll at least have heard that he said it, and may discuss it among themselves or even (can we hope?) look for more information on the subject.
T99 - perhaps bottom-up is the better strategy. I keep thinking that if the people who understand IT and security get it, the horror of this will filter down. But maybe it needs to filter up: she sent government secrets on her own email. It's true, and it's understandable.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure how popularly graspable the email issues are, but most anyone can understand "she lost her security clearance." You could put that in a movie, and the audience would get it.
ReplyDeleteI'm afraid I disagree. Most people have zero clue what it would realistically mean that she sent classified data over her private email. Because email is some mysterious magical device to most of them (I know, supporting average users is my day-to-day), and they have this belief that it is both 100% secure and at the same time available for instant backup the moment they delete it by accident (which is really a head-scratcher for me... if it's absolutely secure, then shouldn't NO ONE else have a copy of it?). So if she sent it to the NSA, or CIA, or DoS then it never was a breach of security, right? Meanwhile, I think back to how, if I were lucky I'd have been given an Article 15 for simply neglecting to properly classify documents I was creating (which would, yes, include any emails I wrote).
ReplyDeleteAnd as for her stupidly transparent lie that she "never sent classified material" over the only email account she used for the DoS, there's not a single person under 60 who holds a clearance that believes that nonsense. The problem is, there's likely less than 3% of the population that meets that qualification. And of those, I'm sure there are some that would vote for her anyway, because she's a Democrat, and they'll vote for a yellow dog before they'd vote for a Republican (hence the term).
That's why I say the email aspects of the story will remain mysterious for most voters, but the "lost her clearance" story might mean something. Although they might not fully understand why what she did warranted taking away her clearance, they'd figure it must have been serious. Of course you're right that it won't faze the yellow-dog D's, but Clinton has to count on a lot of Independents to get the majority, in addition to the yellow-dogs.
ReplyDeleteOne thing the press is missing, even though they've picked up on her careful wording that the stuff "wasn't classified when she sent it," is that the Secretary of State is the ultimate classifying authority on all docs that State originates, and a collateral classifying authority on docs that State handles.
ReplyDeleteIf the stuff wasn't classified when Clinton handled it, it's because she chose not to classify it at the time.
Eric Hines