The Issue Everyone Is Missing In The Clinton Email Scandal

[applegrove]

The Issue Everyone Is Missing In The Clinton Email Scandal

by Lauren C. Williams at Think Progress

http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2015/09/11/3700451/demystifying-classified-material/

"SNIP................


“Many of the critiques [of Clinton] show a total ignorance of how document classification works,” said Peter Swire, a law and ethics professor at Georgia Tech who was on the White House’s NSA review panel in 2014. “It is irrelevant if a piece of information is classified somewhere in government. What is relevant, is whether the recipient knew or should have known it was classified…I’m not aware of any statement that she received an email on her [personal and unclassified email server] that was marked classified.”

The Justice Department’s investigation of Clinton’s private server revealed that 125 emails were retroactively classified by the State Department, at least two of which were labeled top secret. But there’s more to the story: How communications become classified is a messy process full of obstacles and room for error.

“We live in a world where intelligence comes from many different sources, and one agency treats a piece of news as classified and another treats it as unclassified,” Swire said. “It’s possible for something to be classified in one area of government and that classification status be unknown to everyone else. The problem of whether [Clinton’s email contents] would have been classified information would have been the same if it were on [the State Department’s server].”

‘It’s Not A Science’

“Classification is not an adjective; it’s a verb. It’s something that’s done and people are supposed to mark that it has been done,” said Elizabeth Goitein, co-director of the Brennan Center for Justice’s national security program. “Even so, sometimes it’s not always clear whether information is identical to information that has been marked classified.”



................SNIP"

[msongs]

1. classification is also a noun as well as a verb nt

[HassleCat]

2. The old rule

The person or agency generating the message was responsible to classify it and mark I with the appropriate warnings. This evidently was not done by our brilliant "intelligence agencies" and they're now going back and saying Clinton should have known they were classified because of content and circumstances. Maybe that's true today, but it was not true when I worked with classified material.

[Agnosticsherbet]

3. Justice department states no laws broke.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/sep/10/justice-department-rules-hillary-clinton-followed-/


Time to bury that in the graveyard of fake scandles.

In two or three days new one will appear.

[leveymg]

6. Bad source miscited. Piece refers to different charge:

Federal Records Act Violation - no teeth in that one. The other is a felony. Get ready for it.

[FlatBaroque]

9. Does it ever feel like you're fighting an army of straw men? nt

[stevenleser]

11. Replace "fighting" with "creating" in your subject and then you've got it. nt

[WDIM]

4. I think the point is why even have classified information?

A government of the people should not hide from the people.

What was suppose to be the most transparent administration in history has become the most secret and has made the most refusals under foia.

Besides undercover workers working to infiltrate criminal organizations our government should have no secrets.

Now is the time for honesty and transparency. Withholding the truth is the same as lying.

[leveymg]

5. If it's presumed classified foreign gov't info it's classified. Simple.

She broke the law. WHAT LAW? It's all been explained. DU GOOGLE: 18 USC 793 and EO 13526.

[GeorgeGist]

7. Bloviating zeppelin? Indeed have at it.

[leveymg]

8. Funny. Nobody ever argues the facts about this.

You are no different. Please, show us the straight scoop.

[Hollingsworth]

10. All this could have been avoided if Hilary just took some time to think.

Me, I don't think that is something we want in a President. We all want a thoughtful leader.

[murielm99]

12. Some time to think WHAT?

That the laws and rules might change after she left office as SOS? That she should have been clairvoyant?

[Fumesucker]

13. Hillary has already admitted it was short sighted and a mistake to use email the way she did

Are you disagreeing with her?

[murielm99]

14. Those were not her words.

Are you disagreeing with that?