Back in March, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tried to address revelations that she had conducted all official business as secretary using a private email address housed in a server within her own home. Among other things, she maintained: “I did not email any classified material to anyone on my email.”
At the time, we recognized that this statement seemed carefully parsed and should not be taken at face value. We said this in our editorial of March 11:
Obviously, a Cabinet secretary doesn’t just go around attaching classified documents to emails. But did she ever conduct any sort of deliberative discussion, or communicate decisions to staff, or receive briefings that were based on classified or sensitive information? Even a message as simple as, “Please call an immediate meeting about the Iran situation” could be extremely valuable in the hands of a foreign intelligence service.
If Clinton is telling the whole truth, then whenever the government releases the emails that she was kind enough to hand over to the State Department, there should be absolutely no redactions for reasons of national security. Does anyone believe this will be the case?
Today, the AP reports that we were right. At least one email directly related to the Benghazi attack was indeed sensitive enough to require redaction by the FBI.
Because the information was not classified at the time the email was sent, no laws were violated. But Friday’s redaction shows that Clinton received information considered sensitive on her unsecured personal server, which came to light just as she was beginning her presidential campaign.
Clinton, campaigning in New Hampshire, said Friday she was aware that the FBI wanted some of the email to be classified, “but that doesn’t change the fact all of the information in the emails was handled appropriately.”
Asked if she was concerned it was on a private server, she replied, “No.”
Of course, that’s just Benghazi. Secretary Clinton dealt with nearly every aspect of U.S. foreign policy during her time in office, and she probably communicated with people by email. It’s anyone’s guess how many more sensitive matters she discussed by email — and more alarmingly, how many of those emails were surreptitiously accessed or used by foreign powers to shape their own decisions.
Whether that actually happened or not (and the hacking of Sidney Blumenthal’s AOL address provides an example of how easy this would have been), it goes back to Clinton’s decision to use private email, State Department rules and regulations be damned. There are reasons for those rules, and Clinton invited a lot of trouble when she chose to place herself above them.
