Bombshell: Clinton E-Mails Were “Classified From The Get-Go”, Reuters Says

–  Bombshell: Clinton E-Mails Were “Classified From The Get-Go”, Reuters Says (ZeroHedge, Aug 21, 2015):

Just last night, we reported that Hillary Clinton’s campaign had finally admitted that the former First Lady’s private e-mail server – which she used to handle sensitive information while serving as Secretary of State – did indeed contain documents that have since been marked classified.

The admission comes after Clinton sought to appease GOP lawmakers by turning over her personal server to the FBI. Subsequently, reports suggested the server had been wiped clean while an audit of the e-mails Clinton handed in to the State Department showed that some of the threads looked to contain chatter about the CIA’s drone program. 

Clinton’s defense – until now anyway – is that regardless of whether some of the information was retroactively stamped “classified”, it wasn’t marked as such at the time it was sent and received and therefore, no classified information was stored on her private server. As we’ve noted, those with a security clearance are expected to exercise the highest discretion when it comes to their handling of sensitive information and as such, Clinton should have been more careful. Here’s what we said on Thursday:

While it’s certainly disconcerting that the nation’s one-time top diplomat was sending and receiving sensitive information over an unsecure private e-mail server, the issue for Clinton – because it would probably be naive to think that anyone besides voters will actually hold her accountable – is that her handling of the ordeal has served to reinforce the perception that she’s too arrogant and untrustworthy to be given the reins to the country.

That is, the public was already wary of electing yet another member of America’s political aristocracy (or oligarchy, if you will) and the fact that Clinton apparently expects Americans to believe that she had no idea the information she was receiving on her home server might one day be deemed classified (even though she’s been privy to such information in various capacities for decades) seems to underscore her arrogance and highlight her propensity to, as Jean Claude-Juncker famously put it, lie when “things become serious.”

Now, according to Reuters, Clinton’s last line of defense – that anything which is now marked “classified” wasn’t designated as such initially – may be in question. Here’s the story:

For months, the U.S. State Department has stood behind its former boss Hillary Clinton as she has repeatedly said she did not send or receive classified information on her unsecured, private email account, a practice the government forbids.

While the department is now stamping a few dozen of the publicly released emails as “Classified,” it stresses this is not evidence of rule-breaking. 

Those stamps are new, it says, and do not mean the information was classified when Clinton, the Democratic frontrunner in the 2016 presidential election, first sent or received it.

But the details included in those “Classified” stamps — which include a string of dates, letters and numbers describing the nature of the classification — appear to undermine this account, a Reuters examination of the emails and the relevant regulations has found.

The new stamps indicate that some of Clinton’s emails from her time as the nation’s most senior diplomat are filled with a type of information the U.S. government and the department’s own regulations automatically deems classified from the get-go — regardless of whether it is already marked that way or not.

In the small fraction of emails made public so far, Reuters has found at least 30 email threads from 2009, representing scores of individual emails, that include what the State Department’s own “Classified” stamps now identify as so-called ‘foreign government information.’ The U.S. government defines this as any information, written or spoken, provided in confidence to U.S. officials by their foreign counterparts.

This sort of information, which the department says Clinton both sent and received in her emails, is the only kind that must be “presumed” classified, in part to protect national security and the integrity of diplomatic interactions, according to U.S. regulations examined by Reuters.

“It’s born classified,” said J. William Leonard, a former director of the U.S. government’s Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO). Leonard was director of ISOO, part of the White House’s National Archives and Records Administration, from 2002 until 2008, and worked for both the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations.

“If a foreign minister just told the secretary of state something in confidence, by U.S. rules that is classified at the moment it’s in U.S. channels and U.S. possession,” he said in a telephone interview, adding that for the State Department to say otherwise was “blowing smoke.”

We’re sure they’ll be far more on this to come, and while American voters are by now very much used to having “smoke” blown at them on the campaign trail, the poll numbers for Donald Trump (and, incidentally, for dark horse candidate “Deez Nuts“) would seem to suggest that the public’s patience with being lied to by America’s political aristocracy may have run out.

2 thoughts on “Bombshell: Clinton E-Mails Were “Classified From The Get-Go”, Reuters Says”

  1. This woman is running for president because of a corrupt system that runs on money and profit for the few…….Her history is of pure corruption who will do and say anything for profit and power. The republicans would love to have her as the candidate for the democrats, their win would be assured.

    However, the republicans have a pile of loser retreads and idiots and a new guy…..who will say what he pleases, and to Hell if you don’t like it. His showmanship is highly developed, and he has billions, he need kiss no ass for money…….but I am sure he is getting plenty. Trump has tapped into the sense of rage, disenfranchisement and disgust most have with the status quo. Nothing works, the system is fully developed to feed greedy guts and nobody else…….We have 93.8 million long term unemployed (those receiving no benefits of any kind) out of a pool of slightly over 200 million working age Americans…..Nearly 50% unemployment. 50% unemployment is as dire as the Great Depression….and not a word is said, and not one government project to put anybody to work.

    But, billions for foreign wars….billions for government contractors and CEOs……
    The hunger rate in America now exceeds 33%, and could be as high as 40%.
    Our former cheap food policy that kept hunger at bay in the US was eliminated by greedy gut leaders, like the clintons and the bushes……

    Americans are angry, hunger and unemployment does bad things to people.
    Too many are emotional, not logical, and don’t realize Trump is one of the worst of the greedy guts. We have a billionaire buying the US presidency with his money and his disdain for the existing system….And, he could win.

    Trump is the ultimate insider, just like clinton and all the other D.C. players.

    If they run a loser retread like clinton, he will win. The idea of a bush vs clinton race is an insult to all who have lost and suffered since 1997……neither can win. Thanks to this world economic crash we are currently experiencing since June of 2015 in the world markets, the lies being told about the Great Recovery have finally been uncovered for what they are, corporate paid propaganda.

    A name like Trump indicates win……I wonder if he took the name years ago because of its indications…….

    Sanders would be a good candidate, but he is also an insider. His rhetoric is great, we need a leader with such views. If he gets the democratic nomination, he could win. If he does, he would soon find out one guy can do little against the corrupt system…..He would pick a few decent judges which we desperately need…………………..

    Clinton is a loser, a bureaucratic fool riding on her husbands name. Unfortunately, it is all about her, and nothing about the US. This showed clearly how she behaved even when it was obvious the nation wanted Obama instead of her……..She was the “frontrunner” then, too.

    How does she start her campaign? As the frontrunner, just like last time. She learned nothing because she wants the power, the acclaim and the prestige of being the first woman president. She could care less about the needs of this nation, or the will of the people.

    Her fool behavior with the emails shows me she is incompetent as well as ego driven……

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