Second of three parts

This is the second in a series of three articles about Hillary Clinton and an assessment of her qualifications to be the President of the United States.

I use my computer system to handle my business affairs. I control access to all my correspondence. No one else is allowed to examine my emails. Should this level of privacy be granted to everyone?

Of course not. Consider the absurdity of employees purchasing their own email servers, installing them in their homes, and sending/receiving business correspondence through their private systems. All the while bypassing the employees’ company computer systems. Most companies would fire such an employee or even bring charges for this kind of infringement.

Yet while Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton did exactly as I described above.

She took the attitude that she could maintain her own private email server, even for government correspondence. What’s next? Will she bypass the National Archives and open her State Department related files to selected scholars and other researchers?

Hillary’s defenders state that none of the traffic was classified. This claim was found to be untrue. Figure 1 shows information released by the FBI and published by the New York Times that substantiates this point. (See http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/05/27).

The existence of classified traffic being placed on an unclassified server is serious, but begs the issue of any data whatsoever being placed on such a server. Even if all the emails were unclassified, Clinton still violated State Department policy.

(See Figure 1, above)

Here is a chronology of several events about this subject (paraphrased from the nytimes.com website, cited above):

January 2009: Clinton became Secretary of State and began using an email account stored on her private server. At the time, the State Department’s policy stated that “normal day-to-day operations” were to be conducted on an authorized system. Hillary’s system was not so-authorized.

October 2009: Federal guidelines for the storage of federal employee accounts were tightened, requiring these kinds of records be preserved in federal systems. Mrs. Clinton was Secretary of State, a very high position, but she was still a federal employee.

September 2012: A United States diplomatic outpost and a CIA facility in Benghazi, Libya, were attacked. Four Americans were killed. This calamity is inserted in the chronology because of later events, described shortly.

December 2012: The chairman of the House Oversight Committee (Darrell Issa) sent a letter to Clinton asking if she had a private email system. Hillary never replied to this letter. The State Department responded about two months after she left office, without answering the question. The Department sent the Committee information about its overall email policies, ignoring the question about private email accounts.

After Mrs. Clinton left office, State Department employees reviewing the Benghazi attacks discovered correspondence (they say for the first time) between Hillary’s private email account and the government accounts of her staff.

If this brief chronology is not disturbing enough, in early 2015 it was revealed that while she had asked the State Department to release 30,000 emails to investigators, she had also deleted another 32,000 emails. She said this correspondence was about personal matters. 32,000 emails about personal matters?

In addition, she said, “I thought it would be easier to carry just one device for my work and for my personal emails instead of two.” This is an astounding and erroneous assumption. Even more, she was known to carry around multiple electronic devices anyway.

Tyranny of privilege

Several months ago before the two presidential conventions, one of my best friends and I were discussing the presidential race. By then, each of us knew our favored Republican candidate was not going to win the nomination. Our thoughts turned to the Democratic race, and we discussed the issues surrounding Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. I mentioned to him that I intended to write essays about the two (eventual) candidates. My friend, in no uncertain terms, informed me I would need a book to cover what he called the misdeeds of Hillary Clinton.

He was correct in this context: deciding what subjects to put in this piece, because the woman has generated so much controversy. As you have read, I concentrated in this article on “Emailgate” because I believe it represents one of her most serious misdeeds.

I also chose it because I believe it reveals how some of America’s leaders (obviously, Hillary Clinton in this instance) become so accustomed to their power and privilege that it leads them to think they are immune to the rules and laws by which ordinary citizens must live. A person of less stature than Clinton would have been fired (or even prosecuted).

Benghazi

I had placed the Benghazi tragedy on my research list, with the intention of putting it into this series. However, I am holding off any writing on this subject, as a few days ago, it was made public that other documents pertaining to Benghazi had been found by State Department personnel. As of this writing, there is no further information on this material. I bring this matter up in this article because it has been reported that the documents were on Hillary’s server. I hope the material is made available to our citizenry. Several organizations have filed Freedom of Information requests to make the documents public.

The State Department has been heavily criticized for not responding to requests for additional security at the Benghazi facility. To her credit, Clinton took responsibility for the security problems.

However, Susan Rice (at that time, the United States UN Ambassador) did not help matters in her comments about the attack. Her statements created confusion and cast doubts on what or who precipitated the attacks. None of this information was the fault of the State Department, but the agency suffered from some of the backlash.

‘Same-O, Same-O’

While doing research for the Trump and Clinton reports, it became clear that a vast number of American citizens are fed-up with the present political milieu in Washington, D.C. Count me among these people. The view is that Hillary Clinton represents this reviled establishment and her residency in the White House would perpetuate the current climate. One person wrote that it would just be the “same-o, same-o,” which I took to mean that Hillary would not be an agent of change.

I think all readers can agree that changes are needed in Washington. Our country is in a state of paralysis, with partisan politics so bitter that vacancies on the Supreme Court cannot be filled (not to mention vacancies in lower courts as well). Our nation cannot move forward with a crippled (partial) judicial branch.

It is easy to also discern, even among Clinton supporters, a feeling of discomfort, a lack of confidence in Hillary. One person told me that Clinton has had so many smoking guns in her career, there had to be some fire somewhere. Anecdotal? Yes, but that does not diminish the fact that many citizens do not trust her.

Shredding the Constitution

When Hillary Clinton was still a senator from New York, she accused the Bush administration (George W.) of using “secret White House email accounts” along with secret wiretaps and military tribunals. At that time, she also said, “You know, our Constitution is being shredded.”

Perhaps she had forgotten about her private secret email server. “Shredding the Constitution.” What irony.

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Uyless Black is a prolific researcher and professional writer whose undergraduate degree is in psychology. He later obtained graduate degrees in computer systems as well as money and banking. He resides in Coeur d’Alene.