Monday, October 17, 2016

More Dirty Dealing

A senior State Department official repeatedly pressed the FBI to change the classification of emails stored on Hillary Clinton's private server, according to FBI interview summaries set to be released in the coming days. Patrick Kennedy, the undersecretary of state for management, discussed providing additional overseas slots for the FBI in exchange for revisions to classifications of the sensitive emails.

  Weekly Standard
So, we already know that Hillary Clinton screwed a couple of pooches in her private server deal, but what has caught my attention here is that an official at the FBI and Kennedy at State are discussing making a deal in exchange for changing the classification of emails. This seems like a big deal to me.  And I suspect  deal-making of this nature is not an uncommon occurrence.  A reason to support hacking.
The story about potential reclassification of Clinton emails unfolds over three of the summaries. A senior FBI official in the international operations division describes conversations with Kennedy about the classification of emails. In his interview, this official says his section of the FBI had attempted to contact Kennedy repeatedly over the course of several months in the spring of 2015. Kennedy did not return the calls. In the late spring or early summer of 2015, the FBI official reported to work surprised to find a note indicating that Kennedy had called.

According to the summary, Kennedy wanted help. [...] One email in particular concerned Kennedy and, according to the FBI summary, providing a B9 exemption "would allow him to archive the document in the basement of the department of state never to be seen again." The FBI official told Kennedy that he would look into the email if Kennedy would authorize a pending request for additional FBI personnel in Iraq.

[...]

The FBI records official says that his colleague "pressured" him to declassify an email "in exchange for a quid pro quo," according to the interview summary. "In exchange for making the email unclassified State would reciprocate by allowing the FBI to place more agents in countries where they are presently forbidden." The request was denied after the FBI official consulted with a superior in charge of classification].
Matt Zapotosky has a series of Tweets showing some of the redacted documents on the subject, among other things, from the latest batch of Hillary's leaked emails.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

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