Clinton trapped by ABC of politics, claiming she was unaware ‘C’ stood for confidential
Presidential hopeful faces further humiliation after blaming concussion for missed security briefings
THE email scandal that has dogged Hillary Clinton has erupted again after it was revealed she blamed concussion for failing to remember briefings on how to preserve classified government records.
Mrs Clinton also faced ridicule from Republicans after telling the FBI she did not realise the letter “c” on documents meant “Confidential,” instead thinking it had something to do with the alphabetical order of paragraphs.
The front-runner in the US presidential election also admitted brazenly discussing future drone strikes against terrorists on her unsecure email account, and narrowly avoided opening a link to a pornographic website which could have seen her fall victim to Russian hackers.
New revelations in the year-long saga came as the FBI released 58 pages of heavily redacted documents summarising interviews it conducted with Mrs Clinton and her top aides.
The agency was investigating Mrs Clinton’s use of a private server in the basement of her New York home, used for her email when she was US Secretary of State between 2009 and 2013.
James Comey, the FBI director, announced in July that Mrs Clinton would not face criminal charges over the scandal but condemned her for being “extremely careless”.
Her opponents seized on the latest details from the FBI, saying it further called into question Mrs Clinton’s judgment and fitness to be president.
The documents showed Mrs Clinton used phrases like “I don’t recall” and “I don’t remember” a total of 39 times during her three-and-a-half hour interview with agents on July 2.
A picture emerged of a haphazard approach to email security.
Mrs Clinton used at least eight BlackBerry mobile devices linked to the private server. There were also five iPads.
Staff were sometimes dispatched to buy older versions of the equipment because she did not like the most upto-date versions. What happened to discarded devices was “not known” and none of the BlackBerrys were ever recovered by the FBI.
A Clinton aide recalled twice battering phones she no longer used with a hammer, or breaking them in half, in an attempt to dispose of them.
Mrs Clinton also took her electronic devices into prohibited areas on the seventh floor of the State Department, although she was said to have gone to a balcony one floor higher to make calls.
In her FBI interview, Mrs Clinton said she could not recall getting any briefings on how to handle classified information or comply with laws about the preservation of federal records.
“However, in December of 2012, Mrs Clinton suffered a concussion and then around the new year had a blood clot,” the report said. “Based on her doctor’s advice she could only work at State for a few hours a day and could not recall every briefing she received.”
When the agents showed Mrs Clinton one of the emails with the marking “c”, the Democratic presiden- tial nominee said she didn’t know what it meant, adding that perhaps para- graphs were “marked in alphabetical order”. The letter denotes “confidential”, which is the first level of government classification.
On numerous occasions Mrs Clinton received so-called “phishing” emails and was worried attempts were being made to hack her account, the report said. An email from a known associate contained a link to a pornographic website. The FBI report said there was “no additional information” as to whether this was “used as a vector to infect Clinton’s device”.
But, after several redacted lines, it went on: “If opened, the targeted user’s device may have been infected and in- formation would have been sent to at least three computers overseas, includ- ing one in Russia.”
Some of Mrs Clinton’s emails included ‘Based on her doctor’s advice she could only work at State a few hours a day and could not recall every briefing’ discussions of upcoming drone attacks by President Barack Obama against terrorist leaders.
The US government requires that military plans be classified but, according to the FBI report, Mrs Clinton seemed unconcerned and nonchalant that she had discussed them.
“Clinton understood this type of conversation as part of the routine deliberation process,” the report said. “Clinton believed the classification level of future drone strikes depended on the context.”
It was also revealed that on Jan 5, 2013, someone using the dark web tool Tor did hack into an email account that was housed on the same private family server as Mrs Clinton’s. Some of Mrs Clinton’s emails were deleted after the FBI had requested that they be preserved and handed over.
An aide was said to have had an “Oh s--- moment” after realising that a batch of emails due for deletion were left active for a year too long. Weeks after the FBI request, he deleted them.
Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, said: “She says she didn’t know what the letter ‘c’ meant. Unless she’s not an intelligent person that’s a total lie. Her answers to the FBI defy belief.”
Mr Trump spoke at a black church in Detroit, telling the congregation “I’m here to learn” and promising “a civil rights agenda of our time” with better education and more jobs.
Mr Trump was presented with a prayer shawl and joined worshippers dancing and clapping, but outside 150 protesters charged police barricades.
Donald Trump is behind in the US election polls, but not that far behind. This is despite his record of business failures, poor campaign organisation and his remarks about Mexicans, Muslims, Jews, African-Americans, women and several other groups who happen to have a vote. Mr Trump has very high negative ratings. But, then again, so does his opponent. And that is the sad story of this election.
The FBI has released documents related to its inquiry into the unsecure use of Hillary’s private email server when she was Secretary of State. The documents show that Mrs Clinton told the Bureau at least 39 times that she could not recall any training on how to deal with sensitive data, blaming her confusion on concussion, and that she did not realise that the use of the letter “c” on documents meant they were “confidential”.
A sympathetic voter might deem Mrs Clinton, in the words of the FBI, to be “extremely careless”. Mr Trump calls her crooked. Certainly there is a gulf between what Mrs Clinton says is so and what a closer look reveals.
When this scandal first broke, she implied she only had one device for emails and did not entirely understand how it worked. It is now thought that she may have had 13. An aide told the FBI that on occasion he destroyed old Clinton phones by breaking them with a hammer.
It is possible that Mr Trump is so controversial and politically incorrect that even Mrs Clinton’s irregularities pale in comparison. But an election based on who voters dislike the least bodes poorly for the future. Congress is gridlocked, the country is divided. America needs decisive, competent, unifying leadership. Where it will find it is unclear.