National Review Online
Wednesday, August 12, 2015
Hillary Clinton’s private e-mail server, maintained in
her Chappaqua, N.Y., home, has finally been taken by the FBI, five months after
it emerged that, as secretary of state, she used it systematically to conduct
government business. The seizure of the server, along with electronic copies of
its contents maintained by her private lawyer, is in connection with a criminal
investigation into the mishandling of classified information. It is being
dressed up by a reeling Clinton campaign as Hillary’s “voluntary” surrender of
the server in connection with a “security inquiry.”
All we can say is, “It’s about time.”
It has been obvious since March both that the server
should have been seized by the government and that Clinton’s extra-governmental
communications system — designed to undermine record-keeping requirements that
enable government to make disclosures in response to congressional, judicial,
criminal, and public requests — is a major national-security breakdown.
Clinton held one of the highest offices of the United
States, and communications involving high-level intelligence were a routine
part of her job. Despite her protestations to the contrary, it was inevitable
that classified information would be exchanged in her “private” e-mails and
stored on her “private server.”
What was inevitable is now undeniable. Inspectors general
from both the intelligence community and the State Department have reported to
Congress that Clinton’s e-mails contain classified information. And remember,
they have been able to review only portions of the 30,000-odd e-mails Clinton
deigned to surrender (in paper-copy form) on the State Department’s demand, two
years after she departed.
There has been no accounting of the 30,000-plus e-mails
Clinton claims to have destroyed. Her private attorney claims that those
e-mails were “private” and that they no longer exist because the server has
purportedly been erased. The government’s belated seizure of the server means
both those claims can now be tested.
Weeks ago, we learned that when just a small sample of
the e-mails Clinton did disclose was examined by the intelligence community’s
IG, 10 percent (four out of 40) contained classified information. Two contained
classified State Department information. Two others contained information that
was “top secret” at the time the e-mails were sent. Information is classified
as top secret only when its disclosure is likely to result in provable and
“exceptionally grave damage” to national security. Further, the information was
also classified as “sensitive compartmentalized information.” That means it is
to be handled with the strictest standards of confidentiality in only secure
facilities to protect intelligence sources and methods.
Thus, other than the fact that this brings the political
hot water that Clinton is in to a boil, it is difficult to fathom why the
Justice Department and the FBI have been so hesitant to take possession of the
server and any backup copies of its contents.
The State Department has estimated that hundreds of
Clinton e-mails may contain classified information. Indeed, though a federal
court has ordered disclosure of Clinton e-mails in a Freedom of Information Act
case, the Justice Department has just told the judge that production has been
delayed because of concerns over the breadth of sensitive information in the
e-mails. The intelligence community is said to be conducting a careful review
of them — years after the fact because Clinton kept them out of government
files.
With her lax handling of our most sensitive
national-security information, Clinton all but served it to foreign
intelligence services on a platter. Simultaneously, she kept pertinent
information away from public view and from congressional investigators probing
matters like the killing of four Americans in Benghazi.
This could have serious repercussions for Clinton and her
closest aides, former chief of staff Cheryl Mills and deputy chief of staff
Huma Abedin. The latter, Clinton’s closest confidant, also had a
“clintonemail.com” address through which she conducted high-level government
business. Mills and Abedin, like Clinton, have lawyered up. Similar
investigations into the potential mishandling and improper sharing of
classified material have led to criminal investigations against former CIA
directors David Petraeus and John Deutch — with the former eventually pleading
guilty to misdemeanor charges in a case that involved far less classified
information than Clinton’s, and the latter given a midnight pardon by Mrs.
Clinton’s husband, President Bill Clinton, as he left the Oval Office.
Clinton partisans are resorting to their too-familiar
strategy: pound away at their talking points and exhaust the public with
legalese and Orwellian parsing. Yet, their main contention — namely, that the
information was not classified at the time Clinton exchanged the e-mails — has
already been refuted in a statement by the intelligence community’s IG. And
again, that is based on just a tiny sample.
The Clinton defense, moreover, is a red herring: As any
public official with a security clearance knows, it is the information one
learns in classified documents and briefings that must be protected. The issue
is not whether Clinton’s e-mails were stamped “top secret” before she sent
them; it is whether the information in the e-mails was of a sensitive nature
and therefore, as Clinton knew, needed to be vetted before being stored or sent
on a non-government communications system.
For Hillary Clinton and her top aides, the pressing issue
is that their e-mail scandal has entered a new and much more serious phase. For
the American people, however, the pressing issue is not Clinton’s potential
criminal liability. It is whether we can trust a presidential candidate who
flouts our laws and is cavalier about our defense secrets.
The question answers itself.
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