Who is more deceptive – Hillary Clinton or New York Times? (Reader Poll)
Lie down with Hillary’s Server, get up with sleeze.
When the Hillary Clinton email scandal first broke, Hillary’s claims that she conducted her entire job as Secretary of State without classified information being transmitted through her private server and email account did not seem plausible to me.
I said at the time that there was a Bigger Question: Did Hillary use unsecured email for Classified Info?:
As Secretary of State, Hillary presumably received classified and other protected information via email at least on occasion, since it was her only email account. That distinguishes her from predecessors, who at least had government email accounts.
We need more facts on her usage, but if Hillary maintained classified documents (including emails) on an unclassified computer device and email account, that could raise much more serious issues than the records violation….
As Hillary heads towards the presumptive Democratic nomination for President, we need to know what Hillary did with her email account, and when did she do it.
Initially, the press accepted at face value Hillary’s claim that there was no transmission of classified information from her private server/email account.
Slowly, it has been revealed that Yes, Hillary’s emails did contain classified information.
Now two federal Inspectors General have demanded a criminal investigation Hillary, as reported first by The NY Times last night.
“Criminal Inquiry Sought in Hillary Clinton’s Use of Email” was the original headline used by theTimes to describe the demand for a criminal investigation. But then a funny thing happened, the Times changed the story in a way more favorable to Hillary, and also changed the url to bury the links to the prior story, all without notice to anyone of the change.
As Politico reports, New York Times alters Clinton email story:
The New York Times made small but significant changes to an exclusive report about a potential criminal investigation into Hillary Clinton’s State Department email account late Thursday night, but provided no notification of or explanation for of the changes.
The paper initially reported that two inspectors general have asked the Justice Department to open a criminal investigation “into whether Hillary Rodham Clinton mishandled sensitive government information on a private email account she used as secretary of state.”
That clause, which cast Clinton as the target of the potential criminal probe, was later changed: the inspectors general now were asking for an inquiry “into whether sensitive government information was mishandled in connection with the personal email account Hillary Rodham Clinton used as secretary of state.”
The Times also changed the headline of the story, from “Criminal Inquiry Sought in Hillary Clinton’s Use of Email” to “Criminal Inquiry Is Sought in Clinton Email Account,” reflecting a similar recasting of Clinton’s possible role. The article’s URL was also changed to reflect the new headline.
Daily Kos notes the pervasive NY Times deception:
Here’s the first paragraph of an article the New York Times published shortly before midnight Eastern Time on Thursday night, preserved in digital amber by the invaluable NewsDiffs:
Two inspectors general have asked the Justice Department to open a criminal investigation into whether Hillary Rodham Clinton mishandled sensitive government information on a private email account she used as secretary of state, senior government officials said Thursday.
And here’s the lede as it was rewritten—in dramatic fashion—an hour later:
Two inspectors general have asked the Justice Department to open a criminal investigation into whether sensitive government information was mishandled in connection with the personal email account Hillary Rodham Clinton used as secretary of state, senior government officials said Thursday.
Emphasis added in both instances, and boy could that emphasis not be more different. In the first version, Times reporters Michael Schmidt and Matt Apuzzo say that these nameless government officials are basing their request on possible misdeeds Clinton herself is alleged to have committed; in the latter, that’s transformed into an incredibly vague construction: “mishandled in connection with.” What does “in connection with” even mean? It could mean almost anything.
What’s more, this major alteration was made without any notice to the reader. On top of that, the Times even changed the URL (the old one now redirects to the new one). If it weren’t for NewsDiffs and assiduous observers like Zeke Miller, this big edit might have gotten flushed down the memory hole. But in this day and age, fortunately, that sort of shenanigan is difficult to pull off, and “paper of record” will have plenty to answer for Friday morning.
How did it all happen? The Clinton campaign pressured the NY Times for changes:
Hillary can’t be bothered with all this, she has more important things to do:
Hillary is setting up the defense — sure, it was my server and email account, but prove it was ME. Just like it depends on what is the meaning of “is”:
Now you must choose.
Who is more deceptive, Hillary Clinton or The NY Times? (You must choose one, sorry.)
Poll open until 3 a.m. Eastern, Sunday, July 26, 2015.
UPDATE July 25, 2015: Sometime today, the NY Times added this “correction”:
Correction: July 25, 2015
An article and a headline in some editions on Friday about a request to the Justice Department for an investigation regarding Hillary Clinton’s personal email account while she was secretary of state misstated the nature of the request, using information from senior government officials. It addressed the potential compromise of classified information in connection with that email account. It did not specifically request an investigation into Mrs. Clinton.
In addition, government officials who initially said the request was for a criminal investigation later said it was not a “criminal referral” but a “security referral” pertaining to possible mishandling of classified information.
That seems like a non-correction to me. It was a referral regarding potentially criminal conduct with regard to the handling of classified information in Hillary’s email account. So whether or not it was labeled “criminal referral” or “security referral,” it regarded potentially criminal conduct.
Amazing how the NY Times got bullied by the Clinton machine.
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Comments
Without seeing what the Inspector generals actually wrote, it is pretty hard to tell.
I don’t think the defense is that somebody else maybe used her e-mail account.
The defense is, it wasn’t classified.
Now if you say, “sensitive” rather than classified, possibly Hillary Clinton might have a problem.
Also, people who reviewed her e-mails might have a worse problem than Hillary, because they had more time to think about it, or something.
The Inspector Generals say they should have consulted intelligenece agencies to help determine whether the e-mail should be classified.
The WSJ’s article contained this quote from the IG’s office:
“The four emails in question “were classified when they were sent and are classified now,” said Andrea Williams, a spokeswoman for the inspector general. The inspector general reviewed just a small sample totaling about 40 emails in Mrs. Clinton’s inbox—meaning that many more in the trove of more than 30,000 may contain potentially confidential, secret or top-secret information.”
I think that you have to include Sensitive information to the discussion. I would expect that much of the information that Hillary! used on a day to day basis was likely Sensitive. Or, maybe that over four years in office, there was likely a lot of it. It wasn’t Classified yet, since that apparently requires an actual act of classification. But, much of it was at least the sort of stuff that we wouldn’t want our enemies to get their hands on (given her position as Secretary of State), and by using her own server for it, instead of the government server she was supposed to be using, probably gave it to those enemies (via their likely hacking).
So, I think that this is just another one of those Clinton parsings of what they say. It mostly wasn’t classified, because that would have required a classified computer to receive. But, it was still probably illegal to store it on her own server at her house. And, no, I don’t think that Secret Service protecting the house is the least bit relevant. By using the word “classified”, they are likely trying to misdirect everyone from what she actually did.
Most likely everything was sensitive. I don’t think she was making hair dresser appointments, seamstress fitting appointments, and pimping for Bill with it……..
William Jacobson:
That doesn’t check out.
Hillary Clinton’s email address never received classified information sent to her from within the U.S. government because information already marked classified can only be sent to other computers on a classified network. They cannot be sent via regular e-mail, unless you’re like Bradley Manning and copy it onto a CD-ROM that people didn’t realize was a read write drive or something else like that. And then you can e-mail it to Wikileaks.
When she needed to receive classified reports, they were sent to an aide of hers and printed out. That’s what she says, and there’s no reason to think that is wrong. The Clintons have very good lawyers.
The issue here is whether Hllary Clinton – and later other people – should have realized that certain e-mails ought to be classified.
“The issue here is whether Hllary(sic) Clinton – and later other people – should have realized that certain e-mails ought to be classified.” My God, man that’s what this is all about. She was discussing classified information on a personal computer, most likely with people outside of government. She set herself up to be hacked by any foreign power. If she doesn’t know the difference between classified and non-classified she has no business running for the highest office in this land. Piss-poor judgment.
Classified information can be sent over unclassified networks as a PDF (image) file. Having said that, until and unless that server is reconstituted from its component parts (likely now scattered to the four winds and the hard drive left in tiny little pieces) no one can say positively. In this case, the very presumption of the release of classified information must be aggressively investigated. Given HERSELF!’s reputation, and what information is available, the burden of proof no data was held on the server falls to her.
She should be getting fitted for an orange jumpsuit rather than a coronation.
Classified information doesn’t have to be on a piece of paper. It can be in someone’s head.
It can also be spread across several messages to several different addresses then reassembled to form the complete picture.
I don’t thing The Hillaryness is that smart, but Sid Vicious certainly is.
I would go beyond that, and suggest that not only should Hillary and her people have worried about some of the information on her server ultimately being Classified, but that much of the Sensitive information on her server should never have been stored there. It made it much easier to hack, and was probably almost as illegal as if it had been Classified information stored there.
But, that does bring up a point – how could they expect to handle the problem of Sensitive information on her computer being later Classified? The State Department likely had no idea that the information being classified was anywhere but on its own servers. And, given the job description, it would be surprising if classifying the sensitive information that she has received by email were all that rare.
By not telling anybody about it.
You can’t classify what you don’t know about.
Within the same time frame as Edward Snowden Hillary Clinton apparently used a personal “device” to transmit communication of national defense information and classified intelligence to unauthorized persons (e.g., Sidney Blumenthal, a close confidant of Mrs. Clinton).
Mrs. Clinton is currently seeking asylum in her ovaries.
So her email account was compromised by someone she did or did not know. That is not only criminal in itself, it is an utter display of incompetence.
No, her e-mail account wasn’t compromised. Sidney Blumenthal’s e-mail was.
He was e-mailing what was supposed to be intelligence analysis to her at [email protected] for circulation through the federal government, and she, was, presumably, communicating something back about its reception. I can see a problem here, but I’m actually just guessing that she wrote back, or talked to Blumenthal.
Hillary Clinton would forward most of what he sent to Jake Sullivan, deleting some identifying information and perhaps some prefatory notes from Blumenthal, asking him to forward it further (through the classified system that would be) without mentioning anything about who was Hillary’s source.
Hillary Clinton later supplied the copies of what she had sent to Jake Sullivan, but not what she didn’t forward and not the original e-mails from Blumenthal. Neither do we have anything Hillary sent to Blumenthal.
But this year Blumenthal was subpoenaed and did supply what he had sent Hillary.
Now Sidney Blumenthal was not actually the writer of these missives!
That was Tyler Drumheller. This fact was probably not known to anybody except Hillary and Bill Clinton.
And who is Tyler Drumheller?
He was only the central figure in the Niger uranium story which led to the Scooter Libby case.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/mar/25/monica-crowley-was-tyler-drumheller-part-of-hillar/?page=all
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyler_Drumheller
Sammy – you’re way to verbose and missing the point. She had classified information on her computer – her emails were redacted before turning them over. There are thousands of emails being considered, not just Blumenthal’s. You only redact classified information. What is it about this you don’t understand, or do not want to understand? She was using a personal computer to conduct government business in her home, and is now insinuating other people may have sent the emails. You accept that? Fine, accept it and stop trying to force the issue into something it is not.
No, she’s not insinuating anything like that. What she’s insinuiating is that the problem only occurred, or the investigation only concerns, how her e-mail was handled after she turned it over to the State Department.
Now maybe that’s not true, and maybe they also want to look at her initial decision to send e-mail, but that’s what she is insinuating.
How anyone can think that Hillary Clinton made an elementary legal blunder.
How can you think that the Clintons have stupid or incompetent lawyers??
How can you think this was not all carefully vetted by lawyers befire she did it????
And this was not just Hillary Clinton. This was the entire Clinton apparatus. They did stumble a little bit this year with the cover-up – they never expected havnbg to explain it, and it has gotten much more dfficult to find loopholes – but there simply is no prima facie violation of law here.
She may have committed espionage, but she didn’t make an elementary legal mistake.
It’s hard to really condense it, when so much is not known to everyone here.
The first thinbg is, my point was directed to the idea that her server was hacked. I don’t think so. And I think it’s much easier to protect a small system wth few legitimate users, than a big one. You can allow only certain specified devices to log on. You can verify people manually. You can arrange things so that certain things can only be at the server. And the Clintons, of course, are experts at preventing social engineering.
Now, further, to distinguish between what is legal and what is not, you need a bright line.
The bright line is somebody marking it classified.
Otherwise, it is a matter of judgment, which probably means you can’t successfully prosecute.
Tough choice. I selected the NYT because their self-proclaimed mission is to be the “paper of record” – and that is the exact OPPOSITE of what they are when they do this.
They are, in fact, PRAVDA in the USA.
(As an aside…… How incredibly ironic – Orwellian – that the ultra-progressive (read: communist) Daily Kos is referenced in exposing this propaganda/journalism malpractice of the NYT?!?! Strange times….. )
Hillary’s like a social disease; each morning you wake up hoping it’s gotten better but then you’re jolted by that burning, stinging sensation revealing that what you thought was bad is now worse.
How long before someone pulls the plug?
The problem with this particular disease is that if you pull the plug, nothing happens.
You mean a STD, right?
Well now, IMHO, the issue is a push! Of course, Hillary is to arrogant to even be considered for president unless we’d want to have Queen ruling US. And, the NYT is the very symbol of an arrogant entity and also the symbol of nearly everything wrong with journalism in the US.
Still, the issue of which is the US version of Pravda is a push between the NYT and the Minneapolis StarTribune, which is wholeheartedly on the side of all Democrat Party, Socialist, issues, with out much exception. Of course, neither paper seems to understand the need for a version of Investia, or even to understand what that means.
In response to the poll question – the New York Times is far more deceptive Everyone knows HERSELF! lies like a rug every time she takes a breath. The NYT, on the other hand, can bend, fold, spindle and mutilate the truth and everyone that reads that bird cage liner believes what ever is written.
Oh, @Doug Wright Old Grouchy, the preferred name is the Minneapolis Red Star Tribune.
You have to vote ‘New York Times’ on the basis of longevity, although both are OLLLLLLDDDD Gray Ladies in their own rights (or wrongs). The Times IS WAY older, and has been lying more years.
On the other hand, Hellary has done more in less time in terms of mendacity. But density wasn’t really the question.
So hard to chose…
Hillary’s a politician. You expect her to lie. The Times is “the newspaper of record.” You expect it to … lie. Yes, it is so hard to choose.
I vote NYT because they can lie to more people on a daily basis.
Hillary is hiding band barely comes out once a month…………..
Vice President Cheney was suspicious of this Niger uranium story and wanted the CIA to double check it. Instead of doing that, they sent Joe Wilson to Niger, and he came back with an equivocal report.
Later on they told people in the government that Joe Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, was responsible for sending him to Niger, but that wasn’t true. And then later we had a whole investigation about who leaked the fact that Valerie Plame was Joe Wilson’s wife.
Meanwhile the question of why Joe Wilson was sent to Niger was lost.
Joe Wilson said no uranium was actually sent to Iraq but that wasn’t the question.
About the ONLY way Hillary “couldn’t have sent classified ” through her email server would to be to not do her job as SecState.
So either she did send classified info or she didn’t do her job.
(Not that she did it well..I know.)
SO is she lying about her “successes” as SecState or is she lying about classified email?
Of course, that’s an inclusive, not exclusive, “or” so both could be true….
Can’t we believe both? Hillary didn’t do her job, but she sent lots of secrets to the terrorists – just like her boss Obama?
The Inspectors General said in a statement today that a random sample of 40 Clinton e-mails (and of course this is only what she supplied, which is only back and forth to state.gov addresses for the most part) revealed that 4 out of the 40 contained information that was classified (some of the information contained in it was classified, that is) that should never have been transmitted on an insecure system, but they were not marked classified at the time.
And, what’s more, her lawyers have copies of it all, and that’s another problem.
Now I suppose maybe there could be a legal problem for Hillary from this alone if the nature of the information was too obvious and she did this too routinely. (You can’t make this a problem for someone doing this one time because it’s virtually impossible to avoid for someone in her position to be discussing classified information, so it would only be the accumulation that might be a problem. But it would be a hard sell.)
She won’t be in real trouble until it is shown she sent it on to people not supposed to receive it. And who she may have forwarded mail to, or what kind of e-mail outside interests sent to her, is exactly what was excluded from what she supplied to the State Department.
Clearly as the polls show she is in real trouble with voters who don’t trust her or think she is honest. You can’t tell the press that you have never been subpoenaed when in fact you have been, and there is documentation to prove this. The voters understand this. I have a woman friend who is a lifelong Dem who can’t stomach the thought of voting for Hillary. Hillary is going down, and I suspect she won’t even be the nominee.
In trouble with voters: It’s looking like that.
At last, maybe.
They’re both toilet paper.
The only difference is the NY Times is easier to hold with one hand.
This may sound shocking, but the greatest failure associated with this story is with the press who refuse to tell the public what the real, true laws are, how it is the complete responsibility of the person composing and sending any transmittance to ensure all material transmitted in not classified, that anything that might be considered classified must (not suggested, not insinuated, not just a good practice) have some official whose job it is to classify documents to read over the document in question and determine its classification level is there is one, and to ensure that there platform on which the document is to be stored meets the criteria required for the level of classified information being stored there. In the government, the press seems to be giving he impression that nothing is classified until it is released and that releasing it before being classified is perfectly OK. Nothing can be further from the truth. It is a blatant case of the press doing all it can to protect Hillary from federal charges concerning her violation of US secrecy laws for she is their darling and running for president. Sure, let’s sacrifice the security of America on the altar of political correctness because the person who committed the crime is running for office (sarcasm).
I’ve read some more information, and I think I can get this straight now.
The New York Times did not do anything wrong, except maybe they went too far in their official correction. Hillary Clinton misled people about what the prolem was, and said something that went over the heads of most people.
This actually started when, on Thursday night, and again on Friday morning, the Justice Department said (on its web site?) that there had been a criminal referral into Hillary Clinton’s emails, and this was confirmed by Justice Department officials who talked with both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.
There was pushback from the Hillary Clinton campaign, or her lawyers, and the Justice Department took it back, without explaining what exactly had happened, and then there was the published statement by the Inspector General of the intlligence community that was signed also by the State Department Inspector General.
Apparently, it was not a criminal referral but a counter-intelligence referral. Both kinds of investigations are handled by the FBI.
The Justice Department may very well have treated it as a criminal referral, although, as one source said, no decision had been made whether or not to open an actual criminal investigation.
The counter-intelligence referral was almost required, because the intelligence community inspector general is required by federal law to refer potential compromises of national security information to ecurity officials, which would be the FBI here.
The surprising thing would be if no inquiry into this started till now.
The referral was probably really a request to the FBI to try to determine if any material had in fact been intercepted. And also to examne the implication of classified information being in pprivate hands. The referral said that the e-mails were “reputably” being held in a thumb drive in the possession of David Kendall, the Clinton’s top lawyer.
While Hillary Clinton did not use GMail, or Yahoo, or any op of the common Internet e-mail providerrs, it still had to pass through some servers. So you’d want to look into what her e-mail actually opassed through and if any of the places it passed was, or could have been, the target of hack attack – or was it perhaps encrypted in a way so that it doesn’t matter.
The referral letter was transmitted to some members of Congress on Thursday, and that’s what probably caused the Department of Justice to publicly disclose this, perhaps mistating things a little bit.
I am sorry. “Purported” to be in the possession of David Kendall was the word the Intelligence community Inspector General used. Like there’s been any denial of that. It’s an openly acknowledged agreement between Hillary Clinon and the State Deepartment that she can keep a copy of the e-mails she sent over, for purposes of answering questions and so on like that.
There is also a misdemeanor statute that gives up to one year in prison for “knowingly” mishandling or removing classifoed information.
Anmd it’s not legal to make your own summary of a classified document and just sent it any where. That, too is classified and has to be treated like any other classified document.
Of course, Washington doesn’t function without the regular disclosure of classified information. We probably wouldn’t be able to discuss the Iran agreement without that. The Obama Administration has actually been cracking down more on this than its predecessors.
Still, most avenues to get an investigation started are closed. They will not ask reporters to testify about their sources. They can only pursue it from the official end, and usually these investigations to determine the source of a leak are fruitless.
An investigation will usually start forf some secondary reason. Maybe there’s already an unrelated invesigation of some official. Most high profile investigations into this, like that of David Petraeus, have resulted in a plea bargain with no jail time. The really low level people seem to go to jail sometimes.
Now, even if Hillary Clinton pleaded guilty to this crime, that would not be a legal bar to becoming president, although the same thing might get you expelled from Congress, or again it might not, especially if no charges were brought, although maybe it could get somebody kicked off a committee.
There is, of course, constitutional immunity for anything said in a debate or a committee proceedinbg in Congress.
This also maybe might cause someone to resign from Congress in order to avoid expulsion and the precedent it would set, either way, or resignation might be made a condition of a plea bargain. It would also probably prevent anyone from being considered for Vice President.
But the standards for president are lower, and reasonably so, because too much changes when you change presidents, so this should be limited to bribery and high crimes and misdemeanors.
Now, since Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State, she had practically free reign to decide what was a classified or not, or what was mishandling information.
But some of the information she dealt with originated with the intelligence community and she couldn’t declassify that on her own.
The Inspector General of the intelligence community asked to take a look at her e-mails. The State Department refused (concerned about secrets leaking?) but finally let him look at a random sample of 40 e-mails, and he determined that 4 of them contained information that had originated with the intelligence community.
Now this could be a problem not just with what Hillary Clinton sent, but with what others sent to her. Like as if someone in the State Department emailed her to her private, secret e-mail address something saying:
“The CIA says…”
Or even maybe a conclusion of the CIA without even saying where it came from.
This whole business of having regular communication via this e-mail address could be considered to be knowingly mishandling classified information, even if that would actually set a new precedent.
As of now, of course, there’s no controlling legal authority, to echo a famous Clintonian legal phrase from the 1990s)
What went over people’s heads Friday was Hillary including in her statement the words: “I will do my part” (to get this right.)
That meant she was co-operating with the FBI probe, but could sound like she was co-operating with the House Committee – which she actually isn’t yet really.
She now said she would testify on October 22, but it seems she still wants that testimony confined to Benghazi and not to have any questions about the e-mails.
She is co-operating that is, with the FBI probe into the technical details of her e-mail system.