Hillary Clinton Emails Held Info Beyond Top Secret: IG

Some will most likely merge this discussion thread with the other one: "IG: Hillary Clinton Emails..." But I'll copy and past my comment here from that one just in case the admins miss the connection... My guess is that it's about time for someone to fall on their sword for Hillary. They'll take the blame saying that Hillary knew nothing of what they were doing. Demagogues seem to engender that kind of loyalty. Their true believers are like the Storm Troopers in Star Wars

We'll see. Typical corrupt progressive so more than likely she won't be convicted.

I think it might be useful to recap what the actual email situation is with Hillary vs other cases as I've seen people try and make comparisons to the Patraeus situation, which was completely different. In the Patraeus case, he gave classified material to someone who was not authorized to see it. He knew the material was classified when he did it. That is not what has so far been alleged against Hillary.

The allegation against her is that other people sent her emails containing classified material using the unclass government system to her personal email account on her personal server. It's important to note that while the existence of her personal server is a matter to look at in itself, it is not really relevant to the issue about having classified material on an unclass system. Even if she was using the unclas official state dept system, the violation is the same. You can't send classified emails containing classified material on any unclas system like .mil or .gov.

The responsibility for not doing that obviously lies with the sender. The receiver can't control what emails are received. So the first mistake is that people sent classified emails to Hilary on an unclas system. The next issue is whether the emails were properly marked as classified. This is a requirement regardless of whether the emails are sent on a clas or unclas system. Proper marking insures that everyone handling the emails know the classification. So far, there has been no allegation that any of the classified emails that Hillary received were marked classified. So there is no allegation that Hillary allowed any material marked as classified to remain on the unclas system.

Then the next issue is whether Hilary should have recognized unmarked material as classified. This is much more of a judgement call that is impossible for any intel pundits to answer without knowing specifically what info was on the emails, and what was the source of the classification. This may appear clearcut, that something is obviously classified or not. But in reality it is not clear at all. For example, a piece of information may originate with a classified system, and that info is marked classified. But independent of that sourcing, a totally open source could report the same information and it would appear in unclas documents. Sometimes a group of items that are each unclas individually can become classified when put together.

You can read a TS document and at times you could think you are just reading a newspaper article. In fact, you will often see items marked classified that are widely reported in the media and are common knowledge. So it is very likely that a document or email could contain an item that appears in both clas and unclas sources. This leads to the debates amongst various intel agencies over whether an item is classified or not. One agency may have classified an item from a classified system or source, while another may have developed that same info from unclas sources. This is what is going on now with the Hilary emails. One agency may rule it classified and another disagree. Again, there is no way for the public or news media to know.

So what you generally see in the media is pundits stating hypotheticals without any knowledge of the actual emails or sources. They'll say things like "if this happened, then she is guilty of this" without actually knowing anything. And if they say it is comparable to what Gen Patraeus did, you know immediately they don't know what they are talking about.

So it remains to be seen what the end result will be. One thing to note is that people inadvertently sending classified material over an unclas system is actually a fairly common mistake. It happens in HQs that deal with unclas and clas material daily. It is corrected and is not the end of the world and does not put our democracy at risk. The reason Hillary hasn't been arrested as some would think is that this is most likely a much lower level matter than those with political agendas have made it out to be, and so far nothing has been alleged that indicates she knowingly maintained clas info on the unclas system.