2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumUSA TODAY - EDITORIAL BOARD: "Hillary Clinton broke the rules: Our view"
Hillary Clinton broke the rules: Our view
The Editorial Board
May 31,2016
As secretary of State, she ignored repeated warnings about email security.
Warning No. 1:
The report, released last week, reveals that in January 2011, hackers were attacking her private server. Twice, the Hillary and Bill Clinton staffer responsible for maintaining the server had to shut it off to protect data held by America's top diplomat and the former president. The staffer notified State Department officials of the attempted hack, and Clintons top aides there emailed each other to say that sensitive matters should not be discussed with Clinton over email.
Warning No. 2:
Two months later, the assistant secretary for diplomatic security sent a memorandum on cybersecurity threats directly to Clinton, warning of a dramatic increase in efforts "to compromise the private home email accounts of senior department officials" in a likely attempt to "gain access to policy documents and personal information that could enable technical surveillance and possible blackmail. The memo to Clinton warned her that some personal email accounts had already been compromised and had been reconfigured to automatically forward copies of all composed emails to the hackers.
Warning No. 3:
That May, Clinton herself suspected that there might have been another hacking incident when she "received an email with a suspicious link." Hours after her aides discussed the issue over email, Clinton received another email with a suspect link, this time from the personal account of the "under secretary of State for political affairs."
Warning No. 4:
A month later, the State Department sent a cable to all diplomatic and consular posts about the dangers of unsecured personal email accounts. Staffers were ordered to avoid conducting official Department business from your personal e-mail accounts. Who signed that cable? Hillary Clinton.
If Clinton wants to become the president of the United States, she needs to explain how she could make such a reckless decision. She had a chance to answer questions when the Obama administration-appointed inspector general contacted her about the investigation that was released last week. Among five recent secretaries of State, only Clinton refused.
While Clinton is under potential criminal investigation by the FBI for the mishandling of classified material sent through her email, remaining silent might be in her best interests and it is certainly her right. But to be president, she is going to have to convince voters that she can put the national security of the United States above her own short-term self-interest.
It's already clear that, in using the private email server, Clinton broke the rules. Now it remains to be seen whether she also broke the law.
Full editorial at:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2016/05/30/hillary-clinton-email-server-inspector-general-editorials-debates/85159948/
dchill
(38,594 posts)to break the law. There's the "intent" thing.
highprincipleswork
(3,111 posts)still pays dearly with it in terms of public support.
And whether the Democratic Party will keep hanging its fate out with hers in the most reckless, feckless way.
KoKo
(84,711 posts)The FBI has the server(s) and also has records from the Clinton Foundation of the time period when Hillary was SOS. Bill's Aide monitored the Chappaqua Server on the Night Shift while Pagliano monitored the Day Shift.
---------
State Dept. inspector general report sharply criticizes Clinton's email practices
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-hillary-clinton-email-probe-20160525-story.html
The IG review found that technical support for the server was primarily provided by a non-State Department employee who worked for former president Bill Clinton, as well as a State employee, who has been publicly identified in the past as Bryan Pagliano.
The Post has reported previously that the Clintons paid Pagliano separately for his work on the server. The IG's office found that several of his direct State Department supervisors were unaware that he was providing Hillary Clinton with the service, the report says.
The IG's office also found several incidents in which Clinton or people around her expressed fear that the server, which was stored in the Clintons' New York home and shared by the couple, might have been hacked. The report cites a January 2011 email in which a Bill Clinton staffer wrote a Hillary Clinton aide to say he had shut down the server because he believed "someone was trying to hack us."
Hillary Clinton's aides have said there is no evidence the server was, in fact, breached. However, the IG notes that Clinton and her aides failed to alert State Department computer security personnel to the possible breaches, as agency policy requires.]/b]
loyalsister
(13,390 posts)DUIs exist because of the possibility the behavior creates. I think it goes beyond negligence, because she willing broke rules that are in place to prevent security breaches. As someone who claims to have minimal computer skills and knowledge, she took on a professional responsibility to maintain security that she could not independently live up to.
When she took away the power of governmental oversight to do it's job and prevent security breaches, she eliminated any government protection of her as an official to defend herself as not playing a role in any potential breaches.
I'm not an attorney, but that kind of disregard for the potential serious consequences seems to me to be at least up to the line of criminal. Close enough that entrusting her with the presidency is an entirely ridiculous proposition.
RobertEarl
(13,685 posts)I wished the media would quit saying she is stupid.
She knows exactly what she's done.
Her problem is she got caught. Of course with the bank account she has, she knows she can buy her way out of the problems.
That's the kind of thing Bernie wants to fix! NO more bought justice!
Duval
(4,280 posts)It is getting so much attention and will gain even more as the days go by. She is a flawed candidate and IMHO, should step down.
RobertEarl
(13,685 posts)That would be one way of buying her way out, because then we'd all stop talking about it. And we'd all just wave good-bye.
Anyone else would be in jail already.