And Still, Some Will Actually Vote for this Cow.
I happened across the 2015 National Book Fair on CSPAN yesterday. The two, featured interviews were Tom Brokaw and Evan Thomas.
Brokaw was asked about his experience with cancer, and a progression of questions about “The Greatest Generation”, the Vietnam generation, the “boomers” and “millennials”. It was insightful.
Evans was hawking his book, Being Nixon: A Man Divided. This too, was interesting to listen to.
As it happened, conversation during both interviews got around to the Nixon White House and Nixon, himself before and during Watergate.
What was said was illuminating, what was avoided in the conversation would make any thinking person’s head spin. First, with both interviews being conducted from a historical context, at no time did the interviewer draw inference to the wholesale corruption on the part of the present administration, and more to the point, the fiasco we call Hillary.
It was finally a caller, during the Thomas interview, who broached the subject of comparing Watergate to the laws Clinton has broken.
Evan Thomas responded by calling the improper basement server and the unprotected backup server a “mistake”. He said she MIGHT have made a “tactical error” or even a “strategic error” by having the server in the first place. [emphasis mine] And of course, Thomas says he can understand her not wanting her communications to get all wrapped up in the State Department bureaucracy. WTF?! She sat atop the bureaucracy! If that was the problem, couldn’t the smartest, most important woman ever born have seen this as a good reason to reduce the red tape?
What was most disturbing about the interviewer and both guests, no political neophytes they, was the intentional pretense of ignorance and phony naiveté on display.
Comparisons of Type
While discussing Nixon, Thomas repeatedly referred to Nixon being crazy, but in an almost endearing way. RMN was an introverted man and yet couldn’t live outside the limelight. Was his pursuit of politics a means of trying to become the better man he was obsessed with in his own writings? But oh, yes, of course the things he said and did were just terrible, there’s no denying that. [sentiments and emphasis, Thomas’]
Let’s pause there and deal with “crazy”, shall we? Nixon was definitely a man of odd insecurities. They may be the chief reason for his downfall. Thomas points out nothing new in his revelation that RMN hated confrontation. Many believe, with great credibility, that by orchestrating the grand cover-up of a two-bit break-in, he was avoiding a riotous confrontation with and among his own subordinates, one in which loyalties would have been strained or skewed.
Now let’s address HRC’s brand of crazy. Most, if not all of her drones, 35 and older, have probably worked hard to un-remember the episodes when government employees were told not to look directly at the Hillary when she passed by. Equally so, the episodes where employees, trusted adults, were shooed from the hallways and into any nearby office when Herself was to pass, so as not to disturb Her Wonderfulness with their presence. And this was when she was just the First Lady! Hell, how many times did Nixon put the press in a moving rope cage during a public appearance? No politician, in either party would have been stupid or crazy enough to do or allow that! If Nixon’s insecurities made him desperate, Hillary’s delusional imperiousness and sense of entitlement make her psychotic.
And yet, these two veteran “newsmen” CSPAN was talking to; these finger-on-the-pulse legends didn’t see a parallel worth mention. Even as august, elders of the media, they reverted to type and acted as Democratic press hacks.
It leaves even the least initiated shaking his head.
Comparisons of Crime
Before we get down to the nut of legality in Hillary Clinton’s willful actions, let’s look at comparisons from a standpoint of severity.
During the ’72 campaign, ham-handed, almost delusional zealots working for Nixon’s reelection burgled the Dem HQ in DC. No one disputes that Nixon found out about it after the fact. The tapes are quite clear on this. At that point, and for the next year and a half, the White House took on a bunker mentality and spent tremendous energy in an effort to make the whole thing go away. They failed, of course, and in the process condemned themselves.
Of the many, more serious crimes committed by Clinton, we have the illegal server set up in her home. On it, were tens of thousands of pages of sensitive information, put there to circumvent mandated oversight by congress and to hide possible malfeasance on the part of the Clinton foundation. When this woman left office, she didn’t lift a finger to get the contents of the server to the State Department. When word of the sever first surfaced, she denied it existed. Then she had staff come in, without consideration of appropriate clearance, and start to delete anything that might be incriminating or embarrassing. When they were done trying to hide evidence, Clinton turned over PDF copies of some of the official emails (not the email threads themselves) to the State Department. Then an attempt was made to destroy evidence by slicking the server.
What else was she doing during this time? An interesting question. I have always wondered what she was doing as First Lady, between the time that she and BJ Bill were accused of holding 1700 FBI files, illegally, inside the White House; and the time those files were returned.
Here lies a two-fer for an enterprising, young, well-connect reporter who might want to be the next Bob Woodward. It is my belief the Clintons, specifically Hillary (Bill is just too stupid for this kind of dance), were in a string of negotiations with a progression of officials, making promises and hatching deals until they reached an office with the authority to declare, no harm – no foul, in the event the illegally held material was returned. I believe this occurred with both the sever and the FBI files. A real reporter might be able to cull records and find out who the Clinton’s reached out to and when, in each case. See where the careers of their contacts bloomed. Who did these erstwhile government officials end up working for in the months and years following the “investigations”?
It doesn’t take much imagination to reconstruct the events. One contact and deal leads to the next climbing a corrupt chain of command, until one day Hillary says, “Oopsie! Here’s those silly FBI files. They were right here in the residence the whole time. Tsk! Silly files!” Or “Come to think of it, ya know, I did have a server in my basement. Most of the contents have been erased but I’ll be glad to share some of what’s left in a secondary format.”
And what of Nixon’s attempts to smear Ellsberg and John Dean?
In Hillary land, going as far back as the bimbo eruptions and land scandals, character assassination is called…Tuesday.
The Actual Offenses
I love how people talk of the “mistake” when discussing the server in the Clinton’s home. It’s as if one of them tripped on the sidewalk and accidentally built a server – and a back up at a remote location. The building of the server was a willful act.
I can only feel sorry for Clinton as she continues to use the “convenience of one device” defense. Not only is this immaterial to the offense, it is also a lie. We now know she had been seen using at least two devices. Some say she had three. But it is so sad to see it paraded out again and again. Hmmm, let me see. What would be more convenient, using two devices and communicating in the proper legal fashion with my own government department, or wiring the hell out of my basement and having a server built so I can have communications all jumbled up in a way that would be difficult to untangle if I ever had to? I chose wiring my basement!
Clinton has played a constant game of misdirection since this scandal broke. Referring to emails when asked about the server. Insisting that it is not against the law to have a private email account (server) in your home. And it is not. However, it is about the server, stupid. And what is against the law is to have a server in your house for the purpose of holding official government information and not following the requirements regarding the security of that server.
There are things one MUST do before installing such a server in one’s home.
A short list includes:
The U.S. Government must supply the server.
It must be in a room built as a SCIF, which is to say secured in a very specific, government approved fashion.
It must be configured and the hard drive “built” by the government.
People with access to the server must have the proper clearance AND the "need to know" regarding the information on the server.
There are forms to fill out and procedures that must followed in creating the list of who can access, or even know of the server’s existence or the email accounts held there.
If she wanted to have a PDA with more than one email account, and on which government work was to be done, that device must be supplied by the government, be armed with the needed encryption or it would only be usable for unclassified communication. By Clinton’s own admission, her communications were not restricted to unclass. But her server was not secure. And despite her amateurish protestations, she knew she was flashing documents, secure at birth, into cyberspace without proper, legally mandated safeguards. If she truly didn’t know, she isn’t qualified to work as a government office clerk much less Secretary of State or President.
To follow these regulations is required by law. Clinton did not, ergo she broke the law. Whether breaking the law was intentional is of little consequence. Whether she committed an act of criminal intent or criminal negligence does not save her from what SHOULD be the consequences of her activity. There is not grey area here. There are no, “yeah but…” considerations.
And we wonder why no one trusts the government anymore. A former Secretary of State is found to have been working counter to the law for her entire tenure in office. There is no search warrant or arrest warrant issued and the Department of “Justice” gives the perp ample opportunity to destroy evidence before asking for the wiped server to be handed over. In press conferences they hardly mention the backup server and the press drops the subject of the backup after two news cycles.
Trust me, dear reader, had it been you, conservative or liberal, in possession of classified information, not to mention the bloody servers, your house would be raided, your dog shot. You’d be arrested and the entire contents of your home tossed until agents had every last shred of evidence they could find or produce. Ground level and helicopter shots would be run for days on TV and the net. The backup location would endure a similar fate.
But not Empress Hillary. This is because the FBI, IRS, NSA and every other police arm of the government, along with the media, have been coopted as a tool for the preservation of the governing class, no longer a shield for your rights.
Matt Jordan is a travel writer, political commentator and author of 16 20 24. Get your SIGNED copy here! A book on his travels in Mexico and Belize will be released in the Fall of 2015.
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