2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forum"How in the World could this Happen?
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/05/email-hillary-clinton/484634/by Peter Beinart
In a February 23 hearing on a Freedom of Information Act request for Hillary Clintons official State Department emailsemails that dont exist because Hillary Clinton secretly conducted email on a private Blackberrry connected to a private serverDistrict Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan exclaimed, How in the world could this happen?
Thats the key question. What matters about the Clinton email scandal is not the nefarious conduct that she sought to hide by using her own server. Theres no evidence of any such nefarious conduct. What matters is that she made an extremely poor decision: poor because it violated State Department rules, poor because it could have endangered cyber-security, and poor because it now constitutes a serious self-inflicted political wound. Why did such a smart, seasoned public servant exercise such bad judgment? For the same reason she has in the past: Because she walls herself off from alternative points of view.
In the journalistic reconstructions of Clintons decision, two things become clear. First, State Department security experts strongly opposed it. As the Washington Posts Robert OHarrow Jr. reported in a terrific piece in March, State Department security officials were distressed about the possibility that Clintons BlackBerry could be compromised and used for eavesdropping. Soon after Clinton became Secretary of State, they expressed that distress in a February 2009 meeting with Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills, a longtime Clinton loyalist. In a March memo to Clinton herself, Assistant Secretary for Diplomatic Security Eric Boswell wrote that, I cannot stress too strongly that any unclassified Blackberry is highly vulnerable.
The second thing that becomes clear is that these security experts ran into a brick wall of longtime Clinton aides whose priority was not security, but rather her desire for privacy and convenience. From the earliest days, writes OHarrow Jr., Clinton aides and senior officials focused intently on accommodating the secretarys desire to use her private email account and in so doing neglected repeated warnings about the security of the BlackBerry. In August 2011, when the State Departments executive secretary Stephen Mull broached the idea of replacing Clintons personal Blackberry with a Department issued one, Clintons Deputy Chief of Staff and close personal aide, Huma Abedin, replied that the state blackberry doesnt make a whole lot of sense.
To longtime Hillary Clinton observers, all this sounds distressingly familiar. In the literature about Clintons career, the insularity of her staff is a recurring theme. In his biography, A Woman in Charge, Carl Bernstein quotes Mark Fabiani, a lawyer in the Clinton White House, as observing that, the kind of people that were around her were yes people. She had never surrounded herself with people who could stand up to her, who were of a different mind. In their biography, Her Way, Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta Jr. quote Clinton administration Trade Representative Mickey Kantor as noting that in her work on health-care reform, Hillary Clinton got isolated and worked with a group of people, all of whom were off in the same direction. In their book on the health care fight, The System, Haynes Johnson and David Broder quote a senior White House as accusing Hillary Clintons aides of having adopted this bunker mentality Theyve managed to build wall after wall around the First Lady. In her book about the Clinton marriage, For Love of Politics, Sally Bedell Smith notes that, Her subordinates were all true believers, so she seldom heard a dissenting view. In their book about the 2008 campaign, Game Change, John Heilemann and Mark Halperin note that Clintons aides were loyal to a fault. In their book on Hillarys tenure as Secretary of State, HRC, Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes note that, Loyalty, for better and worse, has been the defining trait of Hillary and her tightly woven inner circle She values it in herself, demands it in her aides, and often gives it too much weight in judging the people around her. Commenting on Clintons current top campaign staff, the former Politico executive editor Jim Van de Hei observed on Friday that, They are in a bubble where they all have the bunker mentality.
Surrounding yourself with "yes" people is a sure fire way to go up in flames.
merrily
(45,251 posts)tonyt53
(5,737 posts)EndElectoral
(4,213 posts)And using it wasn't Condi and Powell as your defense is reaching . Two horrible examples of clueless people from Bush's admin don't really justify defending HRC's actions. Two wrongs don't make a right.
99Forever
(14,524 posts)Did either of them have a unsecured private server in their residences, that they did official State Department business on?
TwilightZone
(25,512 posts)You're calling for Clinton to be treated differently because she's running for president?
That explains a lot.
lagomorph777
(30,613 posts)But in this case, it's not necessary. She went so far beyond the behavior of her predecessors that she stands out alone.
99Forever
(14,524 posts)..."explain?"
If you want the other two prosecuted also , fucking go for it. No gawddamn sweat off my brow.
Schema Thing
(10,283 posts)"In a March memo to Clinton herself, Assistant Secretary for Diplomatic Security Eric Boswell wrote that, I cannot stress too strongly that any unclassified Blackberry is highly vulnerable. ?
thesquanderer
(11,998 posts)Summed up in the sub-heading of the article, and explained in the quoted (and boldfaced) portions in the OP:
That's what the article is about.
Powell and Rice are irrelevant to that point.
Abouttime
(675 posts)To get her out of this mess. The DOJ will exonerate Hillary of any and all wrongdoing, the FBI report will be delayed until after the election.
No way in hell Obama hands the Presidency to Trump which would be all but guaranteed with even a threat of a Clinton indictment.
Loretta Lynch must come out and say that Clinton isn't under threat of any charges, I believe she will.
GreenPartyVoter
(72,384 posts)much more difficult with this new baggage PLUS an electorate that may be royally pissed at the current POTUS for protecting her.
riversedge
(70,420 posts)Dem. Party nominee
Response to riversedge (Reply #6)
Post removed
lagomorph777
(30,613 posts)But "I don't care how badly she has behaved, she 'won'" is not going to motivate the voters in CA to feel kindly toward her.
Ferd Berfel
(3,687 posts)What could go wrong?
Oh wait - been their done that - and WE lost.
Lizzie Poppet
(10,164 posts)Shadowflash
(1,536 posts)nt
Ino
(3,366 posts)No evidence yet, publicly revealed? I thought the FBI was investigating the whole "State Dept. favors for Foundation donations" thingie.
felix_numinous
(5,198 posts)is not a good trait for leadership in America. Bunker mentality is an adversarial stance. What we need is someone who can bridge this diverse country and world, we have so much work to do and need to do it together, and need an open dialogue to do it.