The Wash Post has a decent article on it: http://www.washingtonpost.com/....
While she was secretary of state, Hillary Rodham Clinton wrote and sent at least six e-mails using her private server that contained what government officials now say is classified information, according to thousands of e-mails released by the State Department.
30,000 HRC emails have been turned over to the Department of State (DoS), under order by a judge to release all by January. At the end of every month a new tranche will be released, after the FBI and classification experts have redacted classified and sensitive information. Approximately 25% of the emails have been released so far, and it is expected all will be released by the due date.
Previous to this release, a total of 63 emails were determined to contain classified material. Two have been ruled to contain material up to Top Secret / SI / TK // NOFORN, while the rest are presumed to be almost all Confidential, the lowest level above Unclassified. Confidential, like Secret and Top Secret, is not allowed to be placed on unclassified servers, or in unclassified emails. The Confidential status is believe to be because they contain Foreign Government Information (FGI). DoS uses a couple of publications to determine classification. One is the Foreign Affairs Manual http://www.state.gov/... which refers you to the Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO) http://www.archives.gov/.... And, you'll also need to understand the governing Obama Executive Order 13526 https://www.whitehouse.gov/...
For the good news, and the bad news, of the release this month, follow me below. There's a lot, of course, but I promise it won't be too long, in the unlikely event people keep reading after HR'ing the tip jar. I think she's in real trouble. And try not to shoot the messenger!
I've been here since 2005, so if you think I'm a troll, at least I'm not a drive-by, just registered last week troll. I'll vote for HRC in the primary, if I have to, as we all should. She lost me at AUMF, but I won't use this diary for any HRC discussion other than the classified issues.
If you read the three governing documents I linked, you might be wondering if the rules apply to everyone, or just the little people, laboring out of the spotlight. Interestingly, at the DoS Press Conference of 1 Sept, this very question was asked: http://www.state.gov/... Deputy Spokesman Mark Toner, standing in for John Kirby, was asked:
QUESTION: It’s a question that I asked the other day and I’d like to ask if the State Department will take a policy decision on this, not with regard to Secretary – former Secretary Clinton, but with regard to current and past secretaries of state, and that is whether it is the view of the Department that the Secretary of State is bound by the rules laid out in the Foreign Affairs Manual.
DoS responded with the classic spokesman hedge:
MR TONER: Okay. I mean, I --
QUESTION: As a general principle, do they apply to the Secretary of State or not, or do they apply selectively? That’s the question.
MR TONER: Okay. I will get you an answer for that.
The Good News: No TS // SCI documents were found this month. Additionally, and this is a little hard to determine, it seems that nearly all of the remainder were Confidential. FGI seems to be the primary cause for the decision to classify.
Although the initial reporting indicated 150 emails had been classified by the investigators, the number now seems to have settled at 125 for August. 125 is better than 150, so I'm going to call that good news.
The Bad News: The total is now at 188 classified emails found on HRC's server.
The Worst News: Hillary wrote and sent six of the classified emails, now redacted for reasons of national security in this latest doc dump. This means that one of the last defenses of Hillary defenders has been breached: "she never sent any herself, just received, and who knows if she ever even read them." The six emails are fairly heavily redacted. Here's a recent Hillary defense of her actions, and note that she's starting to abandon "nothing classified was sent or received" and has moved to nothing "marked" classified was sent or received:
“I have said repeatedly that I did not send nor receive classified material, and I’m very confident that when this entire process plays out that will be understood by the everyone,” she said last week during a Democratic Party meeting in Minneapolis. She said that government officials may now be making different determinations after the fact, but “it does not change the fact that I did not send, nor receive, material marked classified.”
What kind of stuff was sent? She seemed to like to hear directly from her people about conversations with leaders and representatives of foreign governments, and for whatever reason she thought that kind of FGI was acceptable in unclassified emails. It's not. Remember, the SoS helps set policy for the United States: anything coming from her keyboard relating to policy, personalities, or confidential sources is important and must be protected.
One e-mail Clinton wrote in October 2009 was addressed to former senator George J. Mitchell (D-Maine), who was a special envoy for peace in the Middle East. The entire message, as released by the State Department, is blacked out and tagged with a designation noting that the information was classified. The only part now public is Clinton’s opening: “George . . . .”
Another note went from Clinton to Melanne Verveer, who was ambassador for global women’s issues, on Dec. 9, 2010. It was entirely withheld from release. The subject line reads, “Re: latest . . .,” with the rest redacted, making it impossible to discern the topic of the exchange.
Like other e-mails, it was withheld based on State Department reviewers’ conclusion that it contained “foreign government information” and “foreign relations or foreign activities of the United States, including confidential sources.”
One of the emails essentially referred to a continuation of a discussion from the "high side". In my world, high side has always been TS, but it's possible he meant Secret. Either way, someone responsible should have shut down the discussion immediately, and moved it to the high side, whichever definition applied. Similarly, when she asked for details from a DoS Undersecretary, about his conversations with Russian officials....it's absolutely the definition of classified FGI. And she, the SoS, elicited it from a junior official. Another earlier one--when Huma passed her the long message (all redacted) from the Brit PM, clearly classified under our rules. And even if she was crazy enough to believe it wasn't classified FGI, she had a duty of care, in my opinion, to tell him that unless he wanted the material to be subject to FOIA, they needed to use a classified system.
Some common misperceptions, that I'd like to clear up here:
1. Yes, this is not a criminal investigation. It is, however, an Obama DoJ investigation, led by the FBI, into whether classified information was sent to/from, and stored on, an unclassified server. When that investigation concludes, if the answer is emphatically yes, the Obama DoJ will have to make a decision on what comes next.
2. Everyone does it, so it's ok. It's not ok. I do acknowledge that it seems to have been rampant in the HRC DoS. And that State has a reputation for sloppiness. According to the Post, about four dozen DoS officials sent emails to Hillary that have been ruled to be classified. The person at the top sets the tone, and takes responsibility. A quick example from my past: In 1993, in the Indian Ocean, the ship on which I was a guest, the USS Wasp, went slightly off course and lightly scraped a reef in the middle of the night. The captain was sound asleep in his stateroom, and a junior officer had properly taken the helm. The captain, with a great Navy reputation, and the victim of someone else's mistake, was relieved.
3. But they weren't marked! Yes, I know. Everyone with a clearance is taught to recognize classified. And as I've mentioned and linked before, as an OCA Hillary received yearly specialized training. See E.O. 13526. Incompetence might be a legal defense (I'm not a lawyer), but it's a tough sell as a political defense for someone who wants to be the most powerful person in the world.
For those of you who want to believe there's no there there--good luck to you. There will probably be at least three more document dumps, over the next three months, and my guess is they'll all be at least as damaging as this one. The only saving grace to this mess is that the timing is now, during the primary season, and we avoided these releases during a hard fought general election.