China Obtained Classified Information Thanks to Clinton’s Deliberate Dodge of Federal Government’s Multibillion Dollar Investment in Cybersecurity
During the first democratic presidential debate on Tuesday in Las Vegas, Bernie Sanders essentially gave Hillary Clinton a golden ticket to the nomination. After watching Sanders be Clinton’s apologist for her biggest stumbling block in this election, anybody thinking he is not a plant to steer the Left back into the centrist fold of the Democratic Party is deluding themselves.
“Let me say something that may not be great politics,” said Sanders in response to a question posed by moderator Anderson Cooper regarding Clinton’s email account on a third-party server. “The American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails.”
With this, Sanders allowed Clinton to sidestep a key issue in the debate: her trustworthiness with respect to national security issues.
Security protocols require classified emails be transmitted over secure networks using government authorized computers and servers. Using a private server to store classified information and transferring classified information related to national security outside of a secure network are considered grave violations.
We don’t know the entire content of the emails, but sensitive and classified information regarding U.S. foreign relations was likely transmitted in over 35,000 emails over a considerable period of time. We know that hackers from China, South Korea, and Germany, attempted to gain access to the server. What information has been compromised to rogue parties?
Clinton gave another contorted excuse for her actions: “What we did was allowed by the State Department but wasn’t the best choice…” Clinton was Secretary of State. In effect, she is saying she gave herself permission to violate the law.
Furthermore, U.S. security agencies have gone to great lengths to prosecute whistleblowers for violations of security protocols: Thomas Drake, Pvt. Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, and John Kiriakou are recent examples. Drake, Manning and Kiriakou were charged under the draconian Espionage Act.
When Anderson Cooper asked Clinton whether former NSA contractor Edward Snowden deserved to go to prison for releasing classified information, she responded, “He stole information that fell into the wrong hands.” But if Clinton was insinuating that Snowden gave classified information to foreign governments, it is a claim, according to Dan Froomkin of The Intercept, “entirely unsupported by the evidence; it’s a political smear that even the most alarmist Obama administration intelligence officials have not asserted as fact.”
On the other hand, if Clinton left classified information wide open to hacking by the Chinese, maybe she should be “facing the music,” as she says Snowden ought to be.
Sanders too said that Snowden broke the law, and “there should be a penalty to that,” but he doesn’t call out Clinton for breaking the law. In his view, Snowden “played an important role in educating the American people to the degree in which our civil liberties and our constitutional rights are being undermined.” What role did Clinton play in communicating outside the usual secure channels of the State Department? We still don’t know her motivation, but it was more likely undermining the public interest rather than upholding it.
A serious contender for president would never have conceded an issue so important in determining a candidate’s honesty and trustworthiness. Clinton got a bye from Sanders on Tuesday night, and it’s going to help her along to the White House.
For those on the left “Feeling the Bern” and investing so much into the Sanders campaign, they should consider that their energy is being used to fuel a different fire: Hillary Clinton’s.
