Ken Berwitz
The New York Times likes Hillary Clinton. It supports Hillary Clinton. And it is not about to allow some trifling little matter, like four years of Ms. Clinton\’s emails as Secretary of State being on a personal, easily hacked server, get in her way. No, no, no.
The State Department released 551 more emails from thepersonal server of Hillary Clinton on Saturday, including 84 with some or allof the messages blocked out because they contained information that has nowbeen deemed classified. Three of those are classified “secret.”
Each of the secret emails included Mrs. Clinton\’s commentsatop forwarded chains of messages discussing tensions on the Sinai Peninsula; avisit by John Kerry to Pakistan in the wake of Osama bin Laden\’s death; andsensitive, back-channel talks between the Israelis and Palestinians.
The State Department has now classified as secret 21 emailsfrom among 33,000 that were sent through the private server Mrs. Clinton usedwhile she was secretary of state from 2009 to 2013.
An additional 22 emails – mostly referring to the CentralIntelligence Agency\’s drone strikes, officials have said – have been deemed tobe “top secret.” Those are considered too sensitive to release to the publiceven with portions blocked out.
Well, there you go. That isn\’t so bad, is it? Based on what we just read, the odds of classified information going through Ms. Clinton\’s email server were about 1,000 to 1. That could be nothing more than an occasional, rare little whoopsie. Right?
Uh…..no. Not right. Not even close.
For starters, here is what Rachel Bade and Josh Gerstein of politico.com – which is far from a Hillary-detraction machine, to say the least – told us on December 31:
More than 1,200 emails from Hillary Clinton\’s private serverduring her time at the State Department have now been deemed classified, afterthe agency publicly released its eighth batch of the messages late Thursday.
The agency released roughly 5,500 more pages of emails fromthe private email account that Clinton exclusively used during her four yearsat Foggy Bottom, with an additional 275 messages now upgraded to classified,bringing the total number of retroactively classified emails that moved throughClinton\’s unsecured server to 1,274.
While most of those were elevated to the “confidential” level, according to a State Department official, two in the most recent batch wereupgraded to the “Secret” level, a more sensitive classification for issues thataffect national security.
Happy New Year, Hillary….from every country which, I have zero doubt, hacked that server fhroughout your time as Secretary of State. And, quite possibly, happy new year from every nerdy kid in Chappaqua who, with what I understand to be no more than modest IT talent, could have hacked it as well.
And please do not insult my intelligence with the Clintonian dodge that these emails were not classified at the time she received and sent them. I don\’t give a damn when they were classified. The Secretary of State, as chief foreign officer of the United States, continually gets classified material, regardless of when it is classified. When some wonk at the State Department stamps “Classified” on it is immaterial to that fact.
If Hillary Clinton did not know she would be getting classified material ongoingly throughout her tenure as Secretary of State, she should have resigned and spent those four years taking Remedial Civics 101 instead. Don\’t let her “it wasn\’t classified at the time” dodge fool you for one second.
So what do we have here?
What we have here is a New York Times article trying to create the illusion that the email scandal does not exist, by conveniently leaving out the facts which clearly show that it does. This is not neutral journalism. It is partisan propaganda.
The Times? Partisan? Who would have thought?
