Ed Morrissey:
Pssst — can you keep a secret? Neither can Hillary Clinton … or her staff. According to an exclusive report from Fox News reporters Catherine Herridge and Pamela Browne, the 29 e-mails considered too damaging to release even in redacted form went through at least a dozen different e-mail accounts on Hillary’s secret server and at the State Department:
At least a dozen email accounts handled the “top secret” intelligence that was found on Hillary Clinton’s server and recently deemed too damaging for national security to release, a U.S. government official close to the review told Fox News.
The official said the accounts include not only Clinton’s but those of top aides – including Cheryl Mills, Huma Abedin, Jake Sullivan and Philippe Reines – as well as State Department Under Secretary for Management Patrick Kennedy and others.
A second source not authorized to speak on the record said the number of accounts involved could be as high as 30 and reflects how the intelligence was broadly shared, replied to, and copied to individuals using the unsecured server.
Just as a reminder, the New York Times corroborated Fox’s earlier reporting on the nature of those e-mails — including human intelligence sources, although the Times characterizes the identification of those sources as “oblique.” One came from Richard Holbrooke, who quarterbacked the diplomatic efforts needed to keep the drone program going in Pakistan:
Several officials said that at least one of the emails contained oblique references to C.I.A. operatives. One of the messages has been given a designation of “HCS-O” — indicating that the information was derived from human intelligence sources — a detail that was first reported by Fox News. The officials said that none of the emails mention specific names of C.I.A. officers or the spy agency’s sources.
The government officials said that discussions in an email thread about a New York Times article — the officials did not say which article — contained sensitive information about the intelligence surrounding the C.I.A.’s drone activities, particularly in Pakistan.
The officials said that at least one of the 22 emails came from Richard C. Holbrooke, who as the administration’s special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan would have been intimately involved in dealing with the ramifications of drone strikes. Mr. Holbrooke died in December 2010.
The inclusion of Patrick Kennedy is especially interesting. Kennedy was in charge of security decisions at State during the months leading up to the Benghazi attack, ultimately bypassing security requirements for the consulate and denying requests for more resources. Kennedy should have understood the nature of the information passing through as many as 30 different e-mail accounts and taken steps to secure the data. This once again raises the point that Hillary’s e-mail server could hardly have been that secret. And it clearly wasn’t.
According to Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch any number of these 30 assistants for Hillary who got super top secret information just from her sharing it with them could make a trade to get their guilty plea down to just probation for testifying against Hillary, Huma, Cheryl and a few of the others at the top.
I might as well warn you, Curt… Greg’s not going to like this.
Keep in mind that these are people whose most prominent concerns are global warming, disarming law-abiding citizens so criminals will stop killing people and not making radical Islamists angry at us. National security? Ain’t nobody got time for that.
FOX News reporting is so full of manure that I hardly see any point in bothering to itemize specifically what the manure is anymore. It’s easier just to point to the flies—such as some vague, never-to-be named “government official close to the review.”
BTW, how is Shepard Smith managing to keep his job? Sometimes he actually questions the bullshit when a hired talking head shovels it out. He then sometimes goes on to question their evasive responses as they circle back to their bullshit message or misinformation. You can read his loathing of the entire propaganda process that he’s sitting in on in his face and tone. Is he their token objective reporter or something?
Well, I tried to warn you.
@Bill: He will never admit he list of stories later verified to be accurate or be able to give an account where it was false.
Is Fox biased as hell oh yes, just as biased as all the other”news” agencies.
Most such stories are never confirmed because they’re total crap. They’re continuously cranked out because they have a cumulative effect on the opinions of those incapable of or not predisposed to thinking critically about what they’re hearing. Some people think they’re confirmed because they’re easily influenced by hearing the same lies told repeatedly.
That’s the modus operandi of Fox News in particular, and of the far right in general. It’s a classic propaganda technique. It was very popular with the Nazis, the Italian Fascists, and with totalitarian communist regimes.
Most of your candidates repeat and exploit such lies because they are without honor. I was genuinely shocked when Christie repeated the bullshit Planned Parenthood memes. I expected better of him, at least. It’s been instructive watching the backstabbing some have been attempting on their competition. Rubio doesn’t stand a chance. He’s too nice of a guy. The Cruz campaign seems particularly enthusiastic about underhanded moves, and not especially embarrassed when they’re found out. It reminds me of the Bush campaign against John McCain. It’ll be interesting to see what happens if the Cruz people try something of the sort against Trump. Trump wouldn’t take it lying down. I think Team Trump would go to the mattresses.
@Greg: Well, when they find emails on Hillary’s server (the one with NO emails with classified information on them… THAT server) that has information that is so sensitive, the investigators cannot look at them, well, it isn’t “total crap”.
You dedicate a lot of blah, blah, blah to the assertion that Fox has lied, yet you provide no valid examples of lies. Why would that be, Greg?
What is total crap is a portion of the American electorate ignoring an egregious disregard for national security. These are people that vote who would just as soon see the United States destroyed by enemies as not, all for the sake of some “free” goodies. That IS total crap.
Total Crap was the Dem “debate” one of the moderators a Clinton fund donor, I wonder why national debt was not brought up. How all the new programs/freebies are going to be paid for. What a bore who can get to the Left of left.
Backing the unions pander in Milwaukee by Clinton, an easy shot at Walker in a very very liberal (and broke) city.
@Bill, #7:
It remains total crap until there are examples specific enough to demonstrate what the nature of the “classified information” might be. So far as we know, every instance might be no more than a reference to classified information that had already appeared in public sources. A “top secret” reference might be nothing more than a quote from a Time magazine article. “Classified material” is anything that, in retrospective review, the State Department or the intelligence community don’t want to become public.
The entire scandal is a collection of rumors, glued onto a few sketchy underlying facts. Rumors are being methodically cranked out, and then repeated until they’re thought of as factual information. For example: “The FBI reportedly has assigned some 100 agents full time to the investigation (of Clinton’s server) and another 50 temporarily.” This was cited on CNN this afternoon by Gen. Michael T Flynn as a reason why Hillary Clinton should withdraw from the race. She should withdraw because all of that valuable FBI manpower has been diverted from watching ISIS to the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s server. (He’s playing on another current news meme: ISIS hopes to strike the U.S. homeland in 2016! Really? This comes as news to somebody?) The general talked down the CNN host to get the meme that Hillary’s server increases the threat from ISIS into viewers’ heads. That was obviously his mission of the moment.
The problem is that the only verifiable source of his claim about diverted FBI manpower is FOX News. Their alleged source? According to their Fox news exclusive—which actually means that nobody else has been told any such thing—it was “three intelligence sources not authorized to speak on the record.”
Three intelligence sources, all speaking without authorization? It’s a ridiculous claim. It insults their audience’s intelligence, not to mention the employees of our intelligence community, who are not in the habit of making unauthorized statements to reporters as often as FOX News claims. This isn’t news. This is the sort of crap that FOX is regularly passing off as news. It’s an example of one of the numerous contrived factoids that they insert into their audience’s heads without too much critical analysis, which can then be assembled into a larger picture that takes the place of reality. It’s a false picture made out of individual bits that nobody bothered to question. This is how propaganda works in the 21st century.
@Greg:
No, you remain in denial until you actually SEE the actual content of the emails no one can see, and that ain’t happening. The FBI, the IG and now the State Department and administration cannot convince you and they are not likely to let you see the emails.
But when it comes to classified information being stored on a secret, private, unsecured server, what the information is is not the issue; the problem is that the information is classified. Hillary does not get to determine if it is good classified or bad classified; it was classified and she knowingly and willingly handled it stupidly.
When Hillary swore she had no classified information on her server, she didn’t qualify it as no classified information that ought to be classified, only dumb classified stuff. She said NONE. Nada. Zero. Zilch.
Obviously, she is a liar. Not only that, but someone that is slipshod with national security. The one thread of hope you cling to that she is not is that Fox lies, though you can never quite prove it or provide a shed (smidgen?) of evidence.
Silly and weak, Greg. Silly and weak.
There is real trouble if the NY Times corroborates the Fox story! That means they are trying to be a viable news source or they are moving away from Clinton.
@Randy: Oh, you know the NYT; tools of the vast right wing conspiracy and a subsidiary of Fox News.
@Bill: This whole administration is both incompetent and criminal. The biggest disappointment is so many imbecilic people still believe that this administration has the welfare of our country and its citizens above their own special interests.
@Randy: What has become truly despicable due to left wing influence is how the rule of law has become meaningless. If someone is indicted for a crime nowadays, you have to find out if they are a conservative politician before you take it seriously. If they are, you then have to determine if it is purely politically driven or justified. Usually, it is politically driven. Likewise, liberals doing the bidding of liberals can evade justice due to liberal elements in the legal system ignoring their sworn duties.