Soldier: What if I Used Email Like Hillary Clinton?
The greatest double standard of all.
As Professor Jacobson pointed out yesterday, Hillary’s email problems keep getting worse.
But what would happen to Hillary if she wasn’t a powerful and connected politician? What if she was an average citizen or more importantly, a member of our armed forces?
An American soldier named Chad Longell recently made that point at IJ Review:
I Am A Soldier. Here’s What Would Happen If I Used Email Like Hillary Clinton
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s personal emails are in the news again, and members of the U.S. military and intelligence community sense that there’s a dangerous double standard developing regarding the handling of classified information.
I know this because I currently serve.
The New York Times revealed Monday that Clinton regularly discussed and circulated emails from close family associate Sidney Blumenthal as a source for Libyan intelligence prior to the Benghazi attacks on September 11, 2012.
This is problematic since Blumenthal doesn’t work within the administration, defense or intelligence community — and doesn’t have a secret clearance…
The decision to discuss highly sensitive national security information outside of secure channels without proper oversight and control is not only criminal by military standards, it can also be compromised by counter intelligence agents of foreign enemy governments…
Such a compromise could have devastating and potentially deadly consequences to national security and the safety of the members of the intelligence community. If I had discussed classified missions, on a compromised server, with someone who did not hold a security clearance, the consequences would be harsh and career ending, far different from the protected status Clinton has enjoyed thus far.
Longell’s close is powerful, but I disagree with him on one point…
It is disheartening that those in positions of power who abuse these rules are held to a different standard than the common soldier.
There’s nothing common about the people who put their lives on the line defending America’s freedoms, and that includes Mr. Longell. Thank you for your service, Sir.
Featured image is a screen capture from IJ Review.
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Comments
Hillary says “Rules are for thee, not for me”.
Rules are for people who haven’t collected hundreds of millions for the poor… and kept it for themselves.
“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
This is equality as defined by the Democrats.
WRT the difference: I suppose you could call it the soft bigotry of low expectations.
Sorry, this is ridiculous, and well below the usual standards of LI. There is no indication in the NYT article that Clinton dislosed any classified or sensitive information to Blumenthal. Longell is simply making that up.
You’re not getting a rather important thing.
It’s one thing for Blumenthal to offer Clinton sensitive but not classified information to Clinton outside of proper channels.
It’s quite another for Clinton to take this unvetted intelligence that she, in her capacity as Secretary of State, deems to be important, and send it to other people at their government email addresses, using her unsecure-by-definition email server outside the proper channels.
It is not necessary for Clinton to disclose classified or sensitive information TO BLUMENTHAL for this to make a complete joke of security. If any normal employee of the State Department disclosed the locations and movements of personnel via unclassified email, it wouldn’t be pretty, even if that disclosure is to other State Department employees.
Anything Blumenthal sent her was by definition unclassified. Thus there can be nothing illegal in her sending it to others. The fact that “that she, in her capacity as Secretary of State, deems [it] to be important” does not make it classified.
What has a “joke of security” got to do with this. Longell is making a specific allegation, and it’s nonsense.
What has that got to do with this article?
That’s not the point. If anyone other than Clinton, especially a conservative or republican, had done this whole e-mail dance they life would be over and probably in jail in Ft. Leavenworth or headed there on a fast train.
Clinton has stated that she conducted all of her SoS business via her personal email. It is preposterous to think that in her years as SoS she never sent or received Classified information via email.
Therefore, she either violated security regulations, or she lied, or both.
Either way she has proven herself (yet again) to be unfit for office. Any office.
Hillary actually explained how she transmitted classified information. She said that an aide carried a secure communication device, and she used that device for the communication of classified information. However, she also said that she set up her own e-mail server so that she wouldn’t need more than one device. Why would that have been a concern if she had aides to carry the other necessary devices? How can that be true if she had to use another device for classified information anyway? Hillary may not have committed breaches of national security, but she is very obviously neither able nor willing to tell the complete truth about her use of a private server.
How is any of that at all relevant to this article?
What has that got to do with this article? This article is about a very specific claim: that her receiving information from Blumenthal was illegal, and that this idiot Longell would suffer “harsh and career ending” consequences were he to do so. And that is simply not true. Longell either knows it’s not true, in which case he’s a liar, or he doesn’t, in which case he’s an idiot. Or he thinks the NYT article says Clinton sent classified information to Blumenthal, in which case he’s an illiterate idiot.
What is has to do with is the classic type of word-parsing and semantic games that the Clintons and their shit-eating sycophants have always employed to dance around their illegalities. You’re playing them now…. James, is that you?
The point is not whether this one particular email was legal or illegal Read my email again. You cannot refute my original point which is that Hillary is a liar and is unfit for office.
You can down-thumb it all you like, all you’re doing is showing your own dishonesty.
I think dishonesty is a bit much, but the implication that Clinton conveyed sensitive info to Blumenthal is the soldier’s own. It’s just not much of an important distinction. You’re just cutting the reed really thin re: what constitutes “discussing” information.
What’s actually important is that Sid Vicious’ email correspondence with the Secretary of State was a wonderful trove of intelligence for foreign espionage services. You want to know what Hillary’s thinking about today? Hack Blumenthal’s email. It’s not even necessary to hack Hillary’s own, though frankly if anyone had, how would we know?
It is absolutely dishonest. Either Clinton disclosed classified information to Blumenthal or she did not. It’s not a complicated question.
I have no idea what you mean by that. There is nothing in the quoted material to indicate that Clinton discussed anything with Blumenthal.
So what? “What Hillary’s thinking about today” is not classified, and this Longell would not suffer any legal consequences were he to do the same.
You also can’t prove that she didn’t after all there were 30,000 e-mails that were deleted and I don’t believe for a moment that they were all personal. Frankly, knowing the Clinton’s they were most likely incriminating.
Don’t mind if I do.
The Clintons need to check their Democrat privilege. They’ve always been treated and acted as if they’re “special.” I remember during BJ’s bimbo eruptions, Billary was more concerned about the “Rights of Bill” than the “Bill of Rights” ~
From the perspective of one who has been in the armed forces and worked for a military contractor, both with high security clearance, it is inconceivable that Hillary Clinton did not handle information that was not properly classified at least confidential within her capacity as SoS every time she typed an official email. The musings and decisions of a cabinet level appointee are extremely sensitive data… those of the head of the State Department more so than anyone outside of the Pentagon. Just knowing which thoughts were going through her head would be valuable intelligence to a foreign agent.
Imagine viewing her emails about yoga and groceries and what pant-suit to wear at the next gala event, and being able to conclude that the SoS of the USA is a lightweight halfwit and can be punked like a drooling yak without consequence. You wouldn’t even need a reset button to come to that conclusion with that kind of evidence.
None of that is classified, and more importantly none of that has any connection to this article, which is about Clinton recieving unclassified information from Blumenthal, and this idiot Longell’s claim that if he were to do that he would be in trouble.
We don’t KNOW if none of the information was classified yet. We are only certain that the server was scrubbed and that Hillary won’t hand it over.
Just what kind of “intelligence” was old fixer Sid Vicious supplying to Hillary? He didn’t work for any of the alphabet agencies, so I’d probably move right beyond any patriotic national security fare and take a look at who was supplying Sid’s paychecks. If he was functioning as a payola emissary for the family slush fund then his communications with HRC were probably not actually classified, although they would certainly be a gargantuan political liability if ever discovered. Something you just might want to run through a secret mail server rather than having end up in the national archives, but that’s not on Blumenthal. That’s on the dumbass who wasn’t bright enough to effectively co-mingle government business with the family bidness. The technology to run an effective payola scam like the Clinton’s have has been around for quite awhile. Why weren’t they smart enough to operate a more effective scam?
Why do you imagine that intelligence must come from US agencies? Where do you suppose they get their intel from in the first place? It’s been clear in all the reporting that he was passing on information that he got from his sources in Libya, not from any “alphabet agency”. If Clinton wanted to know what they were saying she could just ask them.
Milhouse lets jump to a slightly different angle. Longell might have laid out his case in the wrong direction but he was correct that he would be treated differently than Hillary has been. If Longell had set up his own server and deleted all information and refused to hand it over HE WOULD BE IN JAIL. I don’t care if he only discussed what he was planning on wearing and where to eat tonight. As soon as it appeared that there had been a security breach and until the extent of the breach was discovered he would be in jail for failure to cooperate and his server confiscated. Why is Hillary not in jail and still in control of her server?
Hey, she could have just used the secure State Department e-mail account that we paid to provide her and then none of this would be an issue. Instead she decided once again that she was special and didn’t have to follow the rules.
This is more than just being ‘special’ or being ‘above the rules.’ It’s only that if you buy her excuse that she had the private e-mail so she wouldn’t have to carry two phones. The only reason someone would actually use a private e-mail would be to keep even their official communications hidden. It’s almost like she went into the job knowing she’d have a bunch of payola schemes to hide.
The attack on Benghazi was highly coordinated and seemed highly aware of both the Ambassador’s location, and the location of the safe house. I wonder how much of that infomation was discussed on Hillary’s private e-mail…