For
mishandling ‘top secret’ information and lying about it, she should be
prosecuted.
By
Andrew C. McCarthy — October 22, 2016
So now Hillary finally knows what the
“(C)” stands for in government documents: It’s Cartwright . . . as
in four-star Marine General James E. Cartwright, the retired 67-year-old former
vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the expendable federal official
against whom laws protecting classified information actually get enforced.
(C), see? Oh wait —
sorry. I don’t mean to confuse Mrs. Clinton by starting this second
paragraph with “(C)”. After all, as she diva-’splained to the FBI, she could only
“speculate” that “(C)” must have something to do with organizing paragraphs “in
alphabetical order.” Speculation was necessary, she said, apparently with a
straight face, because she didn’t really know what “(C)” meant.
The question arose
because the “(C)” designation — applicable to classified information at the confidential
level — turned up in at least one of Clinton’s personal e-mails. Those
would be the e-mails that, she repeatedly insisted, never, ever contained
classified information. Or at least, that’s what she insisted until government
agencies confessed that hundreds of the e-mails do contain classified
information. Then Clinton’s “never, ever” tale morphed into the more narrowly
tailored lie that there were no e-mails “marked classified.” Alas, that claim
could not withstand examination of the e-mails, during which the “(C)” markings
were found . . . whereupon the explanation underwent more,
shall we say, refining. Thus the final, astonishing claim that she didn’t know
what the markings meant, along with the laugh-out-loud whopper that maybe it
was all about alphabetical order.
Yeah, that’s the
ticket!
In case you’re
keeping score: When a person being prosecuted for a crime changes her story
multiple times, as if she were playing Twister (kids, ask your parents), the prosecutor
gets to prove each of the evolving lies at the trial. As you’d imagine, juries
grasp that the truth doesn’t need an editor. That’s why people whose
explanations can’t keep up with the evidence are pretty much a lock to get
convicted.
But that’s when it’s
“(C)” as in Cartwright, not Clinton.
General Cartwright
pled guilty this week to making false statements to FBI agents who were
investigating his mishandling of classified information. The general admits to
falsely concealing his communications with two journalists. They involved
“Stuxnet,” a covert American–Israeli operation to infect the computer systems
that controlled Iran’s main nuclear-enrichment facility. The information was
top secret, regarding a crucial program. Its exposure caused diplomatic
problems and threatens our spy agencies’ relationships with foreign
intelligence services, which are based on the ability to keep secrets secret.
Still, compared with
Clinton, Cartwright is a piker. As the Washington Post’s Josh Rogin reports, Cartwright appears to have been a
“confirming” source. That is, reporters from the New York Times and of Newsweek
already had the Stuxnet intelligence (from some other leaker whom the
administration has not prosecuted). Cartwright merely acknowledged the
information’s accuracy — and, he says, only after it had appeared in published
news reports. His claimed purpose was to prevent additional intelligence
from being published to the detriment of our national security. This does not
excuse his conduct, but it may go a long way toward explaining why the Justice
Department charged only a felony false-statement count, not a
classified-information offense.
Clinton, by contrast,
willfully set up a homebrew e-mail system. Given that the secretary of state’s
duties preponderantly involve intelligence matters, this made it inevitable
that classified information would unlawfully be transmitted and stored on
non-secure servers (i.e., outside the multi-layered protection of the
government’s classified communications system). Thus did the FBI find, for
example, that of the 110 e-mails on Clinton’s non-secure system that were —
contrary to her claims — classified at the time she sent or received them,
eight involved top-secret information.
What does “top
secret” mean? Under the executive order signed in 1995 by Mrs. Clinton’s husband,
President Bill Clinton, it is information the mishandling of which “could be
expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security.” With such an
enormous level of threat, extraordinary restrictions on access are imposed to
limit the possibility of exposure. That’s why the government generally comes
down like a ton of bricks on offenders, or at least offenders not named
Clinton.
Even these
extraordinary measures, however, are deemed insufficient when the information
is designated as “SAP” (“special access program”) — as seven of Mrs.
Clinton’s were. Because mishandling top-secret SAP programs could
expose either intelligence-gathering efforts that are critical to protecting
American lives or intelligence sources who gravely
imperil themselves in order to acquire life-saving intelligence for the United
States, access to such information is on an even more extremely limited “need
to know” basis. Yet, Clinton made them vulnerable to everyone.
Fully 36 of Clinton’s
e-mails fell into the “secret”-information category. That designation applies
when information “could be expected to cause serious damage to national
security” if transmitted or stored in an unauthorized manner. “Serious” is not
as weighty as “exceptionally grave,” but it is, well, serious. That’s
why people usually get prosecuted for compromising it.
Unlike Cartwright,
Clinton did not just communicate with a couple of reporters who already knew
the information in question. She made previously concealed intelligence
massively vulnerable to capture by foreign intelligence agencies and hackers.
On this point, the FBI’s rationalization that it found no evidence of capture
is meaningless. As the FBI director conceded, competent cyber-thieves do not
leave traces of their intrusions.
That brings us back
to “(C),” the designation that applied to at least seven of Clinton’s e-mails
at the time she sent or received them, and that now covers thousands more
because government intelligence agencies adjudged them too sensitive to
disclose publicly. Again, “(C)” does not really stand for “Cartwright” or indicate
alphabetical ordering. It is, instead, the designation for “confidential”
information that, if mishandled, could “cause damage to the national security.”
This means its mishandling is a significant offense, even if the damage is not
likely to be “exceptionally grave” or “serious.” That’s why its compromise
often results in prosecution, or at least severe sanctions such as termination
of employment or loss of security clearance.
In light of General
Cartwright’s prosecution for lying about his mishandling of classified
information, it is worth revisiting Mrs. Clinton’s representation to the FBI
that she did not know what “(C)” meant.
For four years,
Clinton was secretary of state, a job in which classified information is
stock-in-trade. On starting her tenure, Clinton signed a document acknowledging
that she had “received a security indoctrination concerning the nature and
protection of classified information.” In the last paragraph, right over her
signature, Clinton acknowledges that she has been provided with the
aforementioned executive order signed by her husband in 1995 — the one that
explains, in painstaking detail, what classified information at the
confidential level is.
Naturally, when later
asked about it by the FBI, Clinton denied any recollection of this security
indoctrination. Yet in her memoir, Hard Choices, Clinton vividly recounts receiving
thorough training to guard against the omnipresent danger of espionage. Indeed,
she recalled that, when she traveled, she and her staff would leave
“BlackBerrys, laptops — anything that communicated with the outside world — on
the plane, with their batteries removed to prevent foreign services from compromising
them.” Further, based on the training she’d gotten, she took to reading
intelligence information
inside
an opaque tent in a hotel room. In less well-equipped settings we were told to
improvise by reading sensitive material with a blanket over our head.
These mountains of
documents she scrutinized involved such matters as the Snowden leaks, the NSA
program, the Libyan civil war, Mubarak’s fall and the Muslim Brotherhood’s
rise, the Saudi role in 9/11, the Iraqi nuclear and missile programs, the Benghazi
siege, the arming of “rebels” in Libya and Syria, the deterioration of Libya,
Iraq, and Afghanistan, and on, and on. And that’s not the half of it. Before
heading the State Department, she spent eight years in the U.S. Senate, most of
that time as a member of the Armed Services Committee. It was wartime, and the
major national controversies centered on classified information. She therefore
had to pore over intelligence that, for example, supported the Iraq invasion,
was derived from interrogations, measured the success of the “surge,” and so
forth.
If there is one thing
Clinton has emphasized in her presidential campaign, it is her “readiness.”
Whether she was on Capitol Hill or at Foggy Bottom, she wants you to know, she
was never the phone-it-in type. She did all her homework, and then some.
Well, in those
classified documents she studied lo those dozen years, the “(C)” designation is
ubiquitous. It often appears numerous times in a single document — even on a
single page. Yet, despite spending a decade-plus as a daily, top-level consumer
of classified information, Clinton looked a room full of FBI agents and federal
prosecutors in the eye and told them she didn’t know what the “(C)” designation
meant.
Mrs. Clinton has told
many preposterous lies, but that has to be the most outrageous of the lot.
Unlike Clinton,
Cartwright was not a deft political climber. He maneuvered himself into
President Obama’s good graces by siding with the White House on military
planning for Afghanistan, in the process double-crossing his former patrons,
including former Defense Secretary Robert Gates. As these things tend to go in
Gomorrah-by-the-Potomac, Cartwright’s detractors engineered a smear campaign
against him — rumors of an alleged affair — that led Obama to renege on a
promise to elevate him to Joint Chiefs chairman. So by the time he got jammed
up on the Stuxnet leak, he was alone, without allies to bail him out.
When you’re
expendable, it’s amazing how zealous law enforcement can be. Remember Clinton’s
case, in which the Justice Department refused to open a grand-jury
investigation or issue subpoenas to compel production of evidence? Remember how
Justice gave immunity to any Clinton ally who wandered near jeopardy? With that
in mind, get a load of the self-congratulatory press release Justice issued
after Cartwright pled guilty:
We
conducted a thorough and independent investigation included collecting tens of
thousands of documents through subpoenas, search warrants and document
requests, and interviewing scores of current and former government employees.
As these columns have
observed, the Justice Department and FBI conduct themselves very differently
when they are trying to make a case rather than not make a case.
“No, no, no,” they
counter, “we treat everyone equally.” In fact, the FBI makes a cameo appearance
in the Cartwright press release to state a solemn vow (my italics):
The
FBI will continue to take all necessary and appropriate steps to thoroughly
investigate individuals, no matter their position, who undermine the integrity
of our justice system by lying to federal investigators.
Really? No tolerance
for lying? Well then:
Hillary Clinton said
she did not know what “(C)” meant.
Hillary Clinton told
the FBI she could not recall any training regarding how classified information
was to be handled, and yet she wrote extensively about it in her memoir, and —
as a condition of getting access to such information — she signed a government declaration attesting that she had
gotten precisely such training.
And speaking, as the
FBI did, of “the integrity of our justice system”: Hillary Clinton swore in an
affidavit, filed in federal Freedom of Information Act litigation, that she had
directed that “all my e-mails . . . that were or
potentially were federal records” — meaning: anything related to State
Department business — “be provided to the Department of State, and on
information and belief, this has been done.” This affidavit was filed in August
2015: seven months after her homebrew server system became a public controversy
— seven months to review the facts before making these sworn representations to
a federal court. Contrary to what she stated, the FBI found that thousands
of Clinton’s work related e-mails were not provided to the State Department,
and at least three of these withheld e-mails contained classified information.
Moreover, in sworn
testimony before the House Benghazi Committee, Clinton not only repeated the
false claim that she had provided the State Department with “all of my
work-related emails.” She further represented to the Committee that, in
segregating what was work-related from what was purportedly private, her
lawyers “went through every single email.” Plainly, this is not true.
This week, after
General Cartwright’s guilty plea, the Justice Department and the FBI thumped
their chests and told us that if any government official, no matter how
powerful, mishandles classified information and then lies about it, that
official will be prosecuted — at least for the false statements.
Well . . . how
about it?
— Andrew C. McCarthy
is a senior policy fellow at the National Review Institute and a contributing
editor of National
Review.
