She never, through the year and a half that the email saga played out, claimed she did not realize she was transmitting highly classified government secrets through her private email server. Until now.
A quick recap of Clinton’s explanations about all that classified material on her personal email server, because she has a couple of new ones now.
- For six some years she hid the fact that she used a personal email server at all;
- When first outed, she said unambiguously there was no classified communication at all;
- After the first reports that highly classified data was sent and received, she changed her line to “nothing marked classified.”
Now that the FBI has declined prosecution stating Clinton had no “intent” to send and receive all sorts of classified data, marked and unmarked, Hillary has adopted a brand new excuse: why, golly gosh, she just didn’t know it was classified! She is also throwing some of her staff under the bus for good measure.
On Friday, Clinton said she did not realize she was transmitting highly classified government secrets through her private email server while U.S. secretary of state.
Instead, Clinton shifted the blame onto her former colleagues at the State Department, saying in television interviews she followed their lead on whether or not information was classified. “They, I believe, did not believe they were sending any material that was classified, they were pursuing their responsibilities,” she said in an interview with MSNBC.
She did not address the findings by the Federal Bureau of Investigation that she herself sent information on topics classified at the highest levels of classification.
Her newest excuse is obviously tailored to match what the FBI said. It holds no water.
First of course is that with her decades of government experience, it is expected that Clinton would know highly classified data from unclassified. Some of the documents that passed through her server were at the Top Secret/Special Access Program level, and appear to have discussed information obtained via satellite spying on North Korea. Others discussed the names of CIA officials, including at least one who was undercover as a Defense Attache abroad. Some documents were clearly marked classified as Clinton saw them on her Blackberry.
You may not have had a clearance for decades like Hillary, but it seems even a lay person would know that is not run-of-the-mill stuff. At the very least, you might have asked someone to check into it. Clinton’s newest excuse, essentially an ignorance defense, seems a weak qualification for the presidency.
In addition, by statute, Clinton was the senior classification officer for the Department of State. Of course most of that job was delegated, but delegation does not remove responsibility. Indeed, as president she will delegate most of her work, and blaming problems on underlings is a clear sign of poor leader.
I know, I know, you’ll vote for her anyway.
Peter Van Buren blew the whistle on State Department waste and mismanagement during Iraqi reconstruction in his first book, We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People. His latest book is Ghosts of Tom Joad: A Story of the #99 Percent. Reprinted from the his blog with permission.