For Carib News 9/8/16
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has released a heavily redacted findings into the Hillary Clinton e-mail investigation. As Bernie Sanders pointed out in the Democratic Primary, he was sick of hearing about the damn e-mails. What really is the e-mail issue? What is its significance? What will be its impact on the Presidential election?
The 58 page document released by the FBI is a splendid example of the prosecutorial nature of American politics. The proceedings is about the bureaucratic nature of communication in the State Department and the security of memoranda in an age of cyber hackers. Much of the report is of a technical nature and the various interviews conducted by the FBI of Clinton’s aides.
In this witch-hunting kind of investigation, often the people indicted have nothing to do with what prompted the inquiry but some cover-up, some inconsistency in testimony, someone lying.
After a forensic investigation that was requested by the State Department’s Inspector General, America’s leading criminal and anti-terrorist organization spent a year rummaging the former Secretary of State’s e-mails and has concluded that there were no grounds for prosecution.
On assuming the Office of Secretary of State in the Obama administration, Hillary Clinton opted to co-mingle her work related e-mails with her non-work related e-mails. This entailed using a Blackberry and setting up a server at her residence in Chappaqua, New York. An aide to President Clinton, Mr. Cooper, was the specialist in the Clinton entourage in maintaining the hardware and software equipment at the residence. A technician who had worked in Hillary Clinton’s campaign for the Presidency in 2008, Pagliano, was hired to oversee the server and to ensure security. Later on in Hillary Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State, Pagliano moved on and the server was bidded out to a new company. During these changes, great care was made to thwart hackers and to ensure for reliability through redundancy.
What is evident is that Hillary Clinton struggled with the new technology. She was not a millennial and went through a number of Blackberries which were acquired by her staff.
Throughout her tenure at the State Department, her top aides, Mills, Abedin and Sullivan functioned as her gatekeepers. Most of the e-mails sent to Hillary Clinton were initially assessed by her top aides. When Hillary Clinton ended her tenure as Secretary of State, it was her top lieutenants who became responsible for differentiating work-related e-mails from non-work related ones. This was a process undertaken by her former Chief of Staff and attorney in Cheryl Mills. Clinton stayed above the fray. The process was completely transparent.
What was abundantly clear was that there was no reluctance on the part of Clinton or her top lieutenants to provide the State Department with the huge volume of State related e-mails. Approximately 55,000 e-mails were turned over. Cheryl Mills’ law firm did the electronic intensive processing and Clinton’s lawyers turned over the data to be archived in the State Department.
There is some confusion at the State Department as to what documents are classified as Confidential, what are labeled Secret and what are deemed Top Secret. The FBI found over 100 e-mails that were not turned over, some of which had markings on the side “c” which signified Confidential but Clinton was more familiar with documents with headers that clearly stated “Confidential” or “Top Secret”.
The FBI produced no forensic evidence that any of the classified documents that were sent in unclassified systems were ever compromised. The Romanian hacker, Lazar, who hacked Blumenthal’s e-mail systems and claimed to Fox News that he had also hacked Hillary Clinton’s e-mail system was really lying.
Clinton has admitted that she erred in having a private server and was wrong in co-mingling work related e-mails with her personal e-mails. But no crime was committed. No hacking was successful and thus it is puzzling why the e-mail crap cannot be put to bed.
When the media make reference to Clinton’s e-mails, there is an inability to specify the significance of the story. What contemporary media lack is the capacity to see how much they are being “suckered” by undemocratic conspirators who are using the e-mail issue to damage Clinton’s presidential aspirations. The Majority Leader of the House stated categorically that it was the strategy of House Republicans to use the Select Committee on Benghazi to undermine Hillary Clinton’s trust worthiness. Committee after Committee in the House and Senate under the auspices of Republicans kept holding hearings after hearings on Benghazi, trying to find some culpability on the part of Hillary Clinton. The truth of the matter is that Ambassador Stevens erred in travelling to Benghazi with such bare-bones security at a time when Libya was in a state of chaos.
The Inspector General at the State Department had conducted a review of Hillary Clinton’s use of e-mails and the matter could have ended at his report yet the Inspector General was the one who invited the FBI to do a criminal forensic investigation which has produced bureaucratic indiscretions. The Inspector General needlessly politicized the e-mail controversy.
The FBI has played a curious role in all of the hoopla concerning Hillary Clinton’s e-mails. What Director Comey did in announcing the findings of the Bureau was un-precedented and his characterization of the use of classified material unnecessarily politicized the matter in the heat of the campaign. His release of the FBI findings in the heat of the campaign creates the impression that the FBI is “butting” excessively into the political area. Comey is behaving too much like a free agent.
Further complicating the situation is the right-wing organization, Judicial Watch, a group that has been hounding the Clintons from the 1990s. Judicial Watch has used FOIA and a cooperating Federal Judge to go beyond the confines of FOIA to have Hillary Clinton respond to questions regarding why she chose to use a personal server.
All this harassment has not only created the notion that Hillary Clinton as untrustworthy but it has taken a chunk of dollars to pay legal fees to keep the bloodhounds at bay. Something is terribly wrong with American democracy when elected officials from an opposing Party and right-wing allies can use dirty tricks in the pursuit of naked power. It is the kind of nefarious politics why the Republican Party has ended up with a volatile demagogue like Donald Trump. At his rallies, Trump is fond of telling the story about the woman and the snake. This time around it is the snake that has bitten the Republican Party and the enemies of democracy.
