"The truth about the last two Republican secretaries of state has finally come out: Colin Powell and aides to Condoleezza Rice trafficked in classified information on their personal email accounts. This is an enormous scandal!
Oh, wait. No, it’s not.
This news involving Powell and Rice is meaningless except that it sets up a rational conversation (finally) about the Hillary Clinton bogus “email-gate” imbroglio. Perhaps the partisans on each side will now be more willing to listen to the facts. From the beginning, the “scandal” about Clinton using a personal email account when she was secretary of state—including the finding that a few documents on it were retroactively deemed classified—has been a big nothing-burger perpetuated for partisan purposes, with reports spooned out by Republicans attempting to deceive or acting out of ignorance. Conservative commentators have raged, presidential candidates have fallen over themselves in apoplectic babbling, and some politicians have proclaimed that Clinton should be in jail for mishandling classified information. The nonsense has been never-ending, and attempts to cut through the fog of duplicity have been fruitless.
But Powell and Rice’s aides did nothing wrong. (I’m going to focus on them so that partisans who say Clinton broke the law have to attack respected Republicans first.) Start with this: Powell and Rice, like all modern secretaries of state, each had at least two email accounts—one personal and the other for communications designated as highly classified at the time of their creation . For classified information, both of them—and their aides with appropriate clearance—had a sensitive compartmented information facility, or what is known in intelligence circles as a SCIF. Most senior officials who deal with classified information have a SCIF in their offices and their homes.
Then there is the issue of servers. Where did Powell and Rice’s staff have their servers? Who knows, and who cares? Maybe they were private with special security and no public access. Or maybe they were just an AOL server. Whichever it was, they would be just as open to hacking as the State Department servers. In fact, the State Department general email system has been hacked multiple times, with terabytes of information improperly downloaded in 2006 alone. There has been no indication that the email accounts of either Powell or Rice’s staff were compromised.
Powell may have made one mistake in all this. He has said he never backed up his emails or printed them out; that was necessary to comply with some of the preservation rules detailed in the Federal Register. Of course, that doesn’t mean they can’t be recovered, since the FOIA staff is now reviewing his emails.
The bottom line: Democrats may try to turn the revelations about the email accounts used by Powell and Rice’s staff into a scandal. They may release press statements condemning the former secretaries of state; they may call for scores of unnecessary congressional hearings; they may go to the press and confidently proclaim that crimes were committed by these honorable Republicans. But it would all be lies. Powell and Rice did nothing wrong. This could be considered a scandal only by ignorant or lying partisans.
So there is no Powell or Rice email scandal. And no doubt, that will infuriate the Republicans who are trying so hard to trick people into believing Clinton committed a crime by doing the exact same thing as her predecessors.
The shocking truth: Colin Powell’s emails don’t matter
There's much more detailed information in the article regarding classified information. But it's clear MANY on this board are suffering from OCDD (obsessive Clinton derangement disorder) so it may be very difficult for some to get through it all. Others may have to read it 5 or 6 times to get it to sink in.
We can only hope that once Democrats take over the house they keep their integrity level high--and don't drag us through more email investigations into Colin Powell & Condi Rice emails.
Oh, wait. No, it’s not.
This news involving Powell and Rice is meaningless except that it sets up a rational conversation (finally) about the Hillary Clinton bogus “email-gate” imbroglio. Perhaps the partisans on each side will now be more willing to listen to the facts. From the beginning, the “scandal” about Clinton using a personal email account when she was secretary of state—including the finding that a few documents on it were retroactively deemed classified—has been a big nothing-burger perpetuated for partisan purposes, with reports spooned out by Republicans attempting to deceive or acting out of ignorance. Conservative commentators have raged, presidential candidates have fallen over themselves in apoplectic babbling, and some politicians have proclaimed that Clinton should be in jail for mishandling classified information. The nonsense has been never-ending, and attempts to cut through the fog of duplicity have been fruitless.
But Powell and Rice’s aides did nothing wrong. (I’m going to focus on them so that partisans who say Clinton broke the law have to attack respected Republicans first.) Start with this: Powell and Rice, like all modern secretaries of state, each had at least two email accounts—one personal and the other for communications designated as highly classified at the time of their creation . For classified information, both of them—and their aides with appropriate clearance—had a sensitive compartmented information facility, or what is known in intelligence circles as a SCIF. Most senior officials who deal with classified information have a SCIF in their offices and their homes.
Then there is the issue of servers. Where did Powell and Rice’s staff have their servers? Who knows, and who cares? Maybe they were private with special security and no public access. Or maybe they were just an AOL server. Whichever it was, they would be just as open to hacking as the State Department servers. In fact, the State Department general email system has been hacked multiple times, with terabytes of information improperly downloaded in 2006 alone. There has been no indication that the email accounts of either Powell or Rice’s staff were compromised.
Powell may have made one mistake in all this. He has said he never backed up his emails or printed them out; that was necessary to comply with some of the preservation rules detailed in the Federal Register. Of course, that doesn’t mean they can’t be recovered, since the FOIA staff is now reviewing his emails.
The bottom line: Democrats may try to turn the revelations about the email accounts used by Powell and Rice’s staff into a scandal. They may release press statements condemning the former secretaries of state; they may call for scores of unnecessary congressional hearings; they may go to the press and confidently proclaim that crimes were committed by these honorable Republicans. But it would all be lies. Powell and Rice did nothing wrong. This could be considered a scandal only by ignorant or lying partisans.
So there is no Powell or Rice email scandal. And no doubt, that will infuriate the Republicans who are trying so hard to trick people into believing Clinton committed a crime by doing the exact same thing as her predecessors.
The shocking truth: Colin Powell’s emails don’t matter
There's much more detailed information in the article regarding classified information. But it's clear MANY on this board are suffering from OCDD (obsessive Clinton derangement disorder) so it may be very difficult for some to get through it all. Others may have to read it 5 or 6 times to get it to sink in.
We can only hope that once Democrats take over the house they keep their integrity level high--and don't drag us through more email investigations into Colin Powell & Condi Rice emails.
