Whenever something incriminating about the Clinton family arises, I look to Dick Morris for analysis. His latest TownHall article with Eileen McGann does not disappoint.
“The Wikileaks information indicates that Hillary — and her predecessor, Condolleeza Rice — instructed American diplomats to gather information about “office and organizational titles; names, position titles and other information on business cards; numbers of telephones, cell phones, pagers, and faxes,” as well as “Internet and intranet ‘handles’; Internet e-mail addresses, website identification-URLs; credit card account numbers; frequent-flier account numbers; work schedules, and other relevant biographical information.”
The New York Times explains that this information could be used to develop intelligence about the activities and whereabouts of foreign diplomatic personnel.
Seems like old times. In the 1992 presidential campaign, the Clintons retained private detectives to learn negative information about the women who were accusing Bill of improper conduct so as to provide blackmail material to cow them into silence. During his White House tenure, FBI files on prominent Republicans somehow ended up on the desk of an operative who was hired pursuant to Hillary’s recommendation after a career as a bar bouncer.”
The Wikileaks fiasco has had a slew of black clouds, but maybe this exposure of Hillary is a sort of silver lining…
Any thoughts on her conduct?
Also, on my “home website,” my friend Andrew Glidden has contributed what I believe to be a great assessment of the Obama administration “post-Shellacking.”
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WikiLeaks’ Internal E-Mails Revealed: Show Intent To Bring Down The U.S. Government And Possible Connections to George Soros
http://www.newsrealblog.com/2010/12/01/wikileaks-internal-e-mails-revealed-show-intent-to-bring-down-the-u-s-government-and-possible-connections-to-george-soros/
try not to be in such a hurry to scapegoat Hillary
Personally I expect every agent of the US government to be angling for any bit of information that might prove useful to the nation. So long as they do not break laws I want them to be watching/listening for whatever dirt there is to be dug.
Not necessarily because it would ever be wielded as a weapon, but if only to know what may come out at some later date. Knowledge is power.
Frankly, Clinton's instructions strike me as diplo-biolerplate.
The latest spin against Hilary strikes me as Team Obama trying to shift blame as much as possible.
The post title says it all.
Some things are simply "briefings" , and imagine being a U.S. employee in an embassy and not being aware of information gathering … Diplomacy helps stop wars ….
Former First Lady Snoop of Arkansas and the White House Senator Clinton would have excoriated Condi and the Bush administration even post 9-11 for spying on the UN, had it been made public at the time. When has she ever been above the cheap political score?
Of course, now that she's Madam Secretary Oppo Researcher, it's either a trifling or for the good of the country (and maybe the Clintons down the line…)
It does seem a little clumsy for any SecState to directly order this kind of intel gathering, especially with a paper/pixel trail, instead of allowing our other spook agencies to quietly encourage State employees and diplomats to collect "helpful" info. Anyway, I'm wondering why she didn't ask for a list of "tells" on heads of state, so she could really play poker.
I'm no fan of Pants Suits, but come on guys, this is par for the course. Diplomacy has ALWAYS been riddled with intrigue. Diplomatic missions of various types are, and have been used for centuries as a means to gather and transmit intelligence.
Everyone acts as though this is something completely shocking and unique. How many of you actually believe that we are one of just a few that gathers information in this way via the UN? Seriously. They all do it, we do it, its a jungle out there. The only problem in this case, is some sniveling little Aussie weasel was permitted to broadcast the details to the world.
The far more interesting question is, how come the Obama administration didn't do something to pull the plug on Wikileaks a long time ago? How convenient that they waited until Shillery was shellacked by the most recent revelations, and (I'm sure also quite coincidentally) it was allowed to happen just as discussion of a possible Hillary challenge to Chicago Jesus was beginning to gain some steam.
Yeah, yeah. I believe in coincidences like that too (/sarcasm).
If you need someone to talk trash about the Clintons then Dick(head) Morris is the guy. Like Levi Johnston he’s made a career out of biting the hand that once fed him.
He *knows* all this stuff even though he wasn’t there when it allegedly happened and he took no part in any of it.
I’d call him a sleaze bag but that would be an insult to sleaze bags.
I'm not sure I like the head of State acting like a CIA agent, requesting psych profiles of foreign leaders to the point of asking:
"How does stress affect her behaviour toward advisers and/or her decision-making? What steps does Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner or her advisers/handlers take in helping her deal with stress? Is she taking any medications?
"Under what circumstances is she best able to handle stresses? How do Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner's emotions affect her decision-making and how does she calm down when distressed?"
It makes me want someone to look into VF's death once again.
Oh, good Lord. How many people missed the phrase "and her predecessor, Condolleeza[sic] Rice?"
HRC is only continuing policies introduced by Rice during the Bush '43 administration.
Well I don't think Clinton directly ordered these things done. It's business as usual. That's what the State Department is supposed to do. Find information of intelligence value. And being she's the head of the State Dept. her name is signed on the bottom. Just like it'd be on any directive issued by the State Department whether she knew about it or not, big or small.
That's the way I understand it anyway.
Has Clinton done anything above and beyond, and excessively invasive compared to what Rice has done? If they both acted wrongly is Rice getting a free pass?
The information I found about Clinton most illustrative of her is not here nor in the link. It was her obsession about the mental health of President Kirchner of Argentina that I found interesting. What did Kirchner do to deserve such invasive scrutiny?
You gotta luv the HRC bootlickers on this – well she didn't really do it, everybody else did it, but he's a sleazbag (good cut & paste). The epithaph of the Clintons – Lie, Lie, Lie, Deny, Deny, Deny.
@sb10,
Kirchner was beginning to rattle her saber over the Falkland Islands again, and there was some question as to "why" and what was the real objective of this bellicosity? One theory was that Kirchner was trying to distract the Argentine populace over runaway inflation and a myriad of other domestic issues. Another was that she was getting desperate and was serious about grabbing the islands (thereby triggering another war). Perhaps the ad-hoc "mental health assessment" was aimed at determining the likelihood of the latter scenario.
I'm no HIllary lover — I dislike her, personally and politically — but these leaked cables show her doing nothing unusual or extraordinary for a person in her current position. It's all part of the job. Perhaps Cordell Hull was an exception, and if so, many paid for it with their lives.
Morris is taking a cheap and hypocritical shot at Hillary. He used to work for her.
As SecDef points out, the leaks themselves are of very modest import.
My guess is the leaks represent a factional fight within the Democratic Party and between potential Democratic presidential candidates in 2012.
More to the point, the leaks represent the faction of the Democratic Party — and the EU — that hates the USA and wants to moot nation states per se by shredding their processes: the faction controlling the White House and liberal arts faculties.
Of note is that the leaker is unnamed, fate unknown, and their agent, who loves limelight, is still vertical, though on the qui vive.
This says one or more of three things: (1) US security agencies are not tasked with espionage control, or, (2) US security agencies are not capable of espionage control, or, (3) the "leaks" are by the faction inside the executive branch aiming to shred the nation's processes and make the executive branch sole and supreme.
If (3) has truth, the op was modestly able but does not show a competence level of, say, the Stuxnet attack against Iran. It reminds one of juvenile self-importance, essentially immature antics.
The only "big deal" in the mess I see is that Ass-angel, as Althouse calls him, is vertical.