Why the Latest Clinton Scandal Matters

2016 just got much more interesting.

[...]

Hillary Clinton exclusively used a personal email account to conduct government business as secretary of state, violating federal regulations that officials’ correspondence be retained as part of the agency’s record and thus subject to Freedom of Information Act and Congressional requests. Clinton did not have a government email address during her entire four-year tenure, and her aides took no actions to have her personal emails preserved at the time, as required by the Federal Records Act.

It was only two months ago, in response to a new State Department effort to comply with federal record-keeping practices, that Clinton’s personal advisers reviewed tens of thousands of pages of her emails and decided which ones to turn over to the State Department. All told, 55,000 pages of emails were given to the Department. The contents of the rest are known only to Clinton insiders. The process Clinton’s advisers used to determine which emails related to her work at the State Department were turned over has not been explained.

[...]

The Clinton email domain is officially registered to a Jacksonville, Florida company called PERFECT PRIVACY, LLC. The company advertises itself by saying “By signing up for Perfect Privacy when you register your domain, our information is published in the WHOIS database, instead of yours.” That means Perfect Privacy acts as a cut-out, hiding the actual person or organization that set up the domain by sticking its own information online instead.

[...]

Republican Trey Gowdy, who chairs the House committee investigating Benghazi stated Clinton had more than one private email account. “The State Department cannot certify that have produced all of former Secretary Clinton’s emails because they do not have all of former Secretary Clinton’s emails nor do they control access to them,” he said.

[...]

The most basic reason this all matters is because it is the law. As Secretary of State, Clinton was required to maintain her emails as official records. She did not. She choose not to follow the law. Since 2009, said Laura Diachenko, a National Archives and Records spokeswoman, federal regulations have stated that “agencies that allow employees to send and receive official electronic mail messages using a system not operated by the agency must ensure that federal records sent or received on such systems are preserved in the appropriate agency record-keeping system.” The question isn’t whether Clinton was allowed to have a private email account; she was, as secretaries of state before her did. The question is whether she was allowed to be the steward of the archives under the 2009 Federal Records Act. She was not.

[...]

It also matters because Clinton’s email actions were deliberate, and included an effort to hide what she was doing. Her email domain was registered in a way to hide its actual ownership (still unknown), and was set up just as she re-entered public life.

[...]

A careful analysis of Clinton’s testimony on Benghazi will need to be made to look for signs of possible perjury. If anything in the Clinton emails is new and relevant to understanding what happened in Benghazi, she should be held to explain why it was not revealed at the time of her [Benghazi] testimony.

[...]

One assumes most major new organizations are drafting their FOIA requests as we speak.

  

Now THAT could be thorny, considering what we know of the Benghazi incident. It may be time for the Clintons – and Perfect Privacy – to get out the digital shredders.

“We have no indication that Secretary Clinton used her personal e-mail account for anything but unclassified purposes,” State Department deputy spokesperson Marie Harf said Tuesday.

And no indication that she didn’t, either. And, of course, not all things that are corrupt or indeed illegal are classified.

Clinton as a leader allowed herself to be held to lower standards than that of her own rank and file. This, along with the decision to hide the emails itself and the violations of law, will raise questions about what type of president she might make.

Pretty much the same kind we have now and have had for decades. In fact, the Bush White House had been doing the very same thing.

Under such conditions, people will be muttering “Hey, if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.”

[...]

And what about that famous Clinton Blackberry? Blackberry messages go through a special server run by an organization itself. State maintains such a server for its staff’s required use. Did Hillary’s Blackberry run through a State server or a private one? Let’s ask.

I’m pretty sure some member of the GOP will cover that.

Can we subpoena the NSA records?  They've surely got her emails.

Federal Job Security: Bureaucracy

A high-ranking employee at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been accused of watching porn for up to six hours a day at work, since 2010. Although investigators discovered 7,000 pornographic files on his computer, the EPA still cannot fire the man, currently on paid leave.

[...]

The administrative process, designed to rule out politically motivated sackings, is the civil servant protection system. Employees have a right to appeal a termination, with the process dragging on for years. On average, up to 6,000 terminations are appealed each year, about half are related to misconduct and poor performance, CBS reports. Bureaucratic rules make it next to impossible to sever contracts with bad employees, including those who have committed serious violations.

[...]

Congressman Jason Chaffetz said that legislation will be passed to circumnavigate such bureaucracy, including those dealing with "these specific things, like pornography."

  RT

In the meantime...

 ...do what you want...you will anyway.

Nobel Awards Regret

The Nobel Peace Prize Committee’s chairman has been removed from his post for the first time in the award’s 114-year history. He’s been criticized over a number of the panel’s controversial picks, like US president and the EU.

[...]

Three out of six prize winners chosen under Thorbjoern Jagland have raised controversy.

[...]

Jagland’s first year as chairman in 2009 saw the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to US President Barack Obama, who at that time had only been in office for nine months.

Obama won the prize “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples," while the US was engaged in two lengthy wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as heightened US drone strikes on suspected militants in Pakistan and Yemen.

[...]

The Nobel Prize Committee’s 2012 choice of the European Union as the winner of the award has also raised quite a few eyebrows. Critics pointed out Jagland’s other role as head of the European Council as a potential conflict of interest. Many argued the prize was undeserved because of the EU’s economic and foreign policy failures.

[...]

A 2010 award to Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo led to Beijing freezing diplomatic relations with Oslo.

  RT

Does the chairman have the final say? After all, there is a committee.

It's Always Step One: Send Trainers

The United States will deploy personnel by the end of this week to train the Ukrainian national guard, US 173rd Airborne Brigade Commander Colonel Michael Foster said at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC on Monday.

  Sputnik News

"What we have been asked to do, and the issue that exists in the fight, is not an issue of teaching the Ukrainians things they don't know but refining their processes and pushing them forward," [Col. Michael Foster, of the 173rd Airborne Brigade, based in Vicenza, Italy ] said.

  Defense News

But that’s not all.

The US military's plans to send troops into Romania and Bulgaria as a deterrence to Russian aggression could expand to include Hungary, the Czech Republic and Russia's southern neighbor, Georgia, according to a US Army official spearheading the effort.

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Exercises between US troops with Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, which began last April, will expand through the summer, said [Foster]. The exercises are part of the US Army Europe-led land force assurance training mission, known as Operation Atlantic Resolve — now expanded into "north" and "south" components.

[...]

In April, paratroopers from the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team in Vincenza, Italy, will jump into Romania and Bulgaria. They will be replaced by about 1,000 soldiers from the 2nd Cavalry Regiment and 1st Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, according to a report in Army Times.

Operation Atlantic Resolve will continue in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland with about 900 soldiers from 1st BCT, 3rd Infantry, who are rotating in from Fort Stewart, Georgia, as part of the Army's regionally aligned forces concept.

Let us hope that the Europeans will not be willing to have another world war fought on their land.

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

More on the Petraeus Deal

[L]ast year, after a five-year standoff with federal prosecutors, Stephen Kim, a former State Department official, pleaded guilty to one count of violating the Espionage Act when he discussed a classified report about North Korea with Fox News reporter James Rosen in 2009. Kim did not hand over a copy of the report — he just discussed it, and nothing else — and the report was subsequently described in court documents as a “nothing burger” in terms of its sensitivity. Kim is currently in prison on a 13-month sentence.

“The issue is not whether General Petraeus was dealt with too leniently, because the pleadings indicate good reason for that result,” said Abbe Lowell, who is Kim’s lawyer. “The issue is whether others are dealt with far too severely for conduct that is no different. This underscores the random, disparate and often unfair application of the national security laws where higher-ups are treated better than lower-downs.”

In 2013, former CIA agent John Kiriakou pleaded guilty to violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act by disclosing the name of a covert CIA officer to a freelance reporter; he was sentenced to 30 months in jail. Kiriakou’s felony conviction and considerable jail sentence — for leaking one name that was not published — stands in contrast to Petraeus pleading guilty to a misdemeanor without jail time for leaking multiple names as well as a range of other highly-sensitive information.

Kiriakou, released from prison earlier this year, told The Intercept in an emailed statement, “I don’t think General Petraeus should have been prosecuted under the Espionage Act, just as I don’t think I should have been prosecuted under the Espionage Act. Yet only one of us was. Both Petraeus and I disclosed undercover identities (or confirmed one, in my case) that were never published. I spent two years in prison; he gets two years probation.”

  The Intercept

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

Surprise, Surprise, DHS Got Its Funding

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will remain funded after months of drama as House Republicans folded on the issue of taking combative steps to overturn Barack Obama’s executive order on immigration.

The House passed a so-called “clean” funding bill on Tuesday, keeping the lights on at DHS through September. The bill passed, 257-167, as 75 Republicans – including a rare vote from the House speaker, John Boehner – joined with all 182 Democrats to avert a shutdown.

  Guardian

Ferguson Federal Probe Completed

A federal review of Ferguson’s police force found officers disproportionately used excessive force against black people, who were also subject to arrests without probable cause and stops when driving without reasonable suspicion, according to a law enforcement official familiar with the department’s findings.

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According to the law enforcement official, the department detected in Ferguson a pattern of racial bias in violation of federal laws and the 14th amendment to the US constitution, which guarantees equal protection under the law.

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Racist emails sent by Ferguson officials – including one doubting Barack Obama’s ability to serve a full term as president because “what black man holds a steady job for four years?” – were also unearthed and are expected to be released to the public.

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A spokesman for the city of Ferguson said in a statement on Tuesday evening that its leaders would not be commenting until the Justice Department released its report. Publication is expected on Wednesday.

  Guardian

More Documents Show White House Responsible for Torture

[I]n the name of correcting the record, and thanks, ironically, to the CIA’s own effort to defend itself, I want to place blame where it rightly belongs – with the CIA, to be sure, but also with specific high-level officials and lawyers outside the agency who were directly involved in reviewing the CIA’s tactics, and either said yes or failed to say no.

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Had it not been for the SSCI investigation, it is likely that these documents would remain classified to this day.  [...] The CIA’s interest in declassification is clear. It wants to show that it repeatedly sought – and received – legal assurances from higher-ups that its actions were legal and authorized.

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They recount in detail multiple meetings and communications, in which White House and DOJ officials repeatedly gave the CIA a green light to torture.

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The declassified documents also reveal that Condoleezza Rice, National Security Adviser, and John Bellinger, her lawyer, both of whom many years later sought to restrict use of the CIA’s techniques, were personally and intimately involved in the initial approval of the tactics.

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[I]n a meeting with Rice, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Vice-President Dick Cheney, and Haynes [...] “Everyone in the room evinced understanding of the issue. CIA’s past and ongoing use of enhanced techniques was reaffirmed.

[...]

Another declassified document shows that CIA Director George Tenet sent a memo to Rice requesting express reaffirmation of the CIA’s program. Later that month, Tenet met with, among others Attorney General Ashcroft, DOJ lawyer Patrick Philbin, Rice, Gonzales, Bellinger, and Cheney to review the program. Ashcroft, backed by a full explication by Philbin, “forcefully reiterated the view of the Department of Justice that the techniques being employed by the CIA were and remain lawful and do not violate the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment.” [...] Cheney, Rice, and Ashcroft all confirmed that the CIA was “executing Administration policy.”

[...]

[A]t a meeting in July 2004 with Rice, Ashcroft, Gonzales, Bellinger, and Deputy Attorney General James Comey, Rice said that the CIA’s techniques were in her view humane, and Ashcroft reaffirmed their legality (apart from waterboarding, which the DOJ was then reevaluating).

[...]

In short, the declassified documents reveal that the CIA was very nervous about the legal authority for its interrogation program – even after DOJ and White House officials had repeatedly given the program their blessings. [...] Above all, it seems, the agency wanted to make sure it had legal cover.

  David Cole

Which seems strange to me. Of all the things the CIA does and has done, it kind of surprises me that they cared whether they had legal cover. Perhaps they were thinking of their ability to travel internationally if the Hague got involved.

Beyond that, then CIA director George Tenet asked the White House to stop saying publicly that the US government was treating detainees humanely. Again, I don’t know why they cared whether the White House was lying to the public.

In a July 29, 2003, White House meeting that included Vice President Dick Cheney and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, CIA Director George Tenet went so far as to ask the White House “to cease stating that US Government practices were ‘humane.’” He was assured they would.

[...]

Apparently the CIA, like many others, couldn’t believe the White House was flat-out lying.

Tenet, in a July 3, 2003, letter to Rice, requested that White House officials reaffirm that waterboarding and other so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques” were being done on their orders.

[...]

Tenet cited, as an example, a June 2003 Washington Post story headlined, “U.S. Pledges Not to Torture Terror Suspects.”

According to the CIA memo that documented the July 29 meeting, Cheney “asked how the press could have gotten such an impression.”

CIA general counsel Scott Muller responded to Cheney by mentioning the February 2002 memo issued under George W. Bush’s name, titled “Humane Treatment of al Qaeda and Taliban Detainees,” which directed, “As a matter of policy, the United States Armed Forces shall continue to treat detainees humanely, and, to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessity, in a manner consistent with the principles of Geneva.”

  The Intercept

How, indeed.

Muller also reminded Cheney of the time in June 2003 when deputy White House press secretary Scott McClellan, on the occasion of Bush’s obligatory proclamation on United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, had told reporters that “detainees are treated humanely and consistent with our values and consistent with our laws and consistent with our treaty obligations.”

So, really, they just needed to drop the “humanely” part.

The DCI [Director of Central Intelligence] stated that it was important for the White House to cease stating that US Government practices were ‘humane’ as that term is easily susceptible to misinterpretation. Bellinger undertook to insure that the White House press office ceases to make statements on the subject other than that the US is complying with its obligations under US law.”

Which is exactly what they did. Never mind that some laws had to be written after the fact to cover what was being done.

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

Did Somebody Say "Wolf!"

Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, gave a speech before the U.S. Congress today. Have a look at the transcript. At least have a look at how much applause he was getting, ending with "cheers and applause."  Apparently, there were several standing ovations.

Here's what he's telling them about Iran's nuclear arsenal capabilities:

I feel a profound obligation to speak to you about an issue that could well threaten the survival of my country and the future of my people. Iran's quest for nuclear weapons.

[...]

Iran could soon be armed with intercontinental ballistic missiles and nuclear bombs.

[...]

Absent a dramatic change, we know for sure any deal with Iran would include two major concessions to Iran. The first major concession would leave Iran with a vast nuclear infrastructure providing it with a short breakout time.

Breakout time is the time it takes to mass enough plutonium for a nuclear bomb.

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[With this concession,] Iran's breakout time would be very short. About a year by U.S. assessment. Even shorter by Israel's.

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Iran would be free to build a huge nuclear capacity that could produce many, many nuclear bombs.

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Iran could make the fuel for an entire nuclear arsenal in a matter of weeks once it makes that decision.

  Talking Points Memo

Where have we heard this before?

In 2012 Netanyahu said in closed talks reported by Israeli media that Iran is just “a few months away” from attaining nuclear capabilities. Later that same year, he gave a widely-mocked address at the United Nations in which he alleged that Iran would have the ability to construct a weapon within roughly one year.

[...]

A 2009 U.S. State Department diplomatic cable released by Wikileaks described then-prime ministerial candidate Netanyahu informing a visiting Congressional delegation that Iran was “probably one or two years away” from developing weapons capability.

[...]

Almost two decades ago, in 1996, Netanyahu addressed a joint session of Congress where he darkly warned, “If Iran were to acquire nuclear weapons, this could presage catastrophic consequences, not only for my country, and not only for the Middle East, but for all mankind,” adding that, “the deadline for attaining this goal is getting extremely close.”

[...]

Four years before that Congressional speech, in 1992, then-parliamentarian Netanyahu advised the Israeli Knesset that Iran was “three to five years” away from reaching nuclear weapons capability, and that this threat had to be “uprooted by an international front headed by the U.S.”

  The Intercept

March 3, 2015, Billmon Twitter:

What's the Punishment for Passing Classified Documents?

You know the answer to that. It depends on who you are.

David H. Petraeus, the best-known military commander of his generation, has reached a plea deal with the Justice Department and admitted providing his highly classified journals to a mistress when he was the director of the C.I.A.

[...]

He is eligible for up to one year in prison but prosecutors will recommend a sentence of probation for two years and a $40,000 fine.

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[T]he deal also ends two years of uncertainty and allows Mr. Petraeus to focus on his lucrative post-government career as a partner in a private equity firm and a worldwide speaker on national security issues.

  NYT

Well, that is just rich, isn’t it? If you’re Edward Snowden and you pass classified material to journalists for the public good and to report illegal activity, you are charged with espionage and endangering national security and forced into exile. If you’re David Petraeus, war hero, and you pass classified material to your mistress to include in a biography she’s writing about you for personal gain, you’re given probation and allowed to collect huge fees for talking about national security.

“The broader nation needs his advice, and I think it’s been evidence that people still want to hear from him,” said Michael E. O’Hanlon, a senior fellow with the Brookings Institution. “People are forgiving and know he made a mistake. But he’s also a national hero and a national resource.”

[...]

In the days after Mr. Petraeus resigned in 2012, Mr. Obama appeared to clear him of any significant wrongdoing. At Mr. Obama’s first news conference after being re-elected, the president said he had no evidence that Mr. Petraeus had disclosed classified information “that in any way would have had a negative impact on our national security.”

So that’s the criterion, is it? Whether the disclosure has a negative impact on our national security? Hmmmm. What negative impact on our national security has occurred as a result of the disclosures provided by Edward Snowden?

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