Clinton Emails Held No Direct References to Undercover CIA Officers – NBC News
A handful of emails forwarded to Hillary Clinton’s personal server while she was secretary of state contained references to undercover CIA officers — including one who was killed by a suicide attack in Afghanistan, according to U.S. officials who have reviewed them.
But contrary to some published reports, three officials said there was no email on Clinton’s server that directly revealed the identity of an undercover intelligence operative. Rather, they said, State Department and other officials attempted to make veiled references to intelligence officers in the emails — references that were deemed classified when the messages were being reviewed years later for public release.
In one case, an official said, an undercover CIA officer was referred to as a State Department official with the word “State,” in quotes, as if to suggest the emailer knew the officer was not actually a diplomat. In another case, an email refers to “OGA” for “other government agency,” a common reference to the CIA. Yet another now-classified email chain originated with a member of the CIA director’s staff, leading some officials to question how Clinton could be blamed.
From: Clinton Emails Held Indirect References to Undercover CIA Officers – NBC News
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/02/fbi-colin-powell-email-probe-218748 – I guess Powell & Rice might need to be indicted as well.Report
This can’t be. I was informed, by the august John R Schindler — a man who clearly confirmed, through the his massive mental powers, that not only had Hillary Clinton emailed out entire lists of undercover agents, but she’d been told those names by Blumenthal and his deep, private intelligence agency.
And also that the “intelligence community” was in an uproar.
You cannot tell me that after Schindler, personally, confirmed that story to be true that it’s not! Lucy wouldn’t move the football again!
Oh well, there’s always next week and variant XJ-14F of the story. I’m sure that one will be true.Report
If you happen actually to be interested in the story rather than rooting for your side, you might want to await Schindler’s response. Rather than run away from this story, he’s been highlighting it on his Twitter timeline, calling it pro-HRC spin in overdrive, and has responded to elements of it (and also to the Rice/Powell argument).
I don’t know whether he takes it seriously enough to respond to NBC in coherent detail (he is directly linked in the piece) rather than through intermittently intemperate tweets. I think he should, but it may in the end be up to real players rather than to people like him.Report
I think the snark may have been due to the obvious fact that Schindler is only rooting for his side, rather than honestly reporting on the story.Report
The snark was for the fact that, once again, Lucy held the football and the usual suspect charged.
Schindler gets MORE snark because he was so hyperbolic and made such ridiculous claims (“Blumenthal was running a private intelligence agency! And also, as a civilian, not classifying his own emails to people! The intelligence agencies are in an uproar! Spies names were released! TREASON AND VILENESS) and people treated him seriously.
Where, once again, an ounce of skepticism based on past history would have saved some people some embarrassment.
It’s got nothing to do with “sides”. It’s got to do with the utter gullibility some people are showing. I made identical fun of the 9/11 Truthers and the people who claim Bush stole Ohio in 2004. They’re just, you know, not the current topic at hand.Report
It’s a security violation to speak in ‘code’ to try to get around the security classification limitations of a communication system.Report
Betcha money it turns out nothing of the sort happened. I mean just last week it was treason and lists of spies real names. I betcha by next week, it’ll be…nothing.
Colin Powell is apparently getting snagged (some of his email is suddenly getting the same treatment) and his response on his was (paraphrasing) “Jesus, just release them so people can see what idiots the NSA/CIA is being calling this crap ‘classified'”.Report
The (well, one) thing about classification is how contagious it is.
When I was working for a DoD contractor, we were doing stuff with some perfectly ordinary scientific software (since it had been developed by academic boffins in their ivory towers) – being a “first system”, it was never actually fielded, although the “second system” apparently was, much later.
However, the physical workstation it ran on had a standard message routing system on it – and if stuff got real in the Fulda Gap, those messages could be Secret. Since our software, being colocated, could access the messages, it also got a classification – even in peacetime, when the messages wouldn’t be. So the workstations we developed on were subject to a form of the same protocols as Clinton’s server. It goes without saying that everyone allowed physical access had to be cleared up to Secret as well.
Note that in no situation, if we were all honest and doing our jobs properly, would any of us working on the project not only have no access to any Secret information, but we’d never even know if any actually existed. They still had to go Mythbusters on our dev stations when they went out of service…Report
Working as a government contractor, we got informed that reading articles on Edward Snowden was grounds for termination and possible prosecution, if on work PC’s. It was heavily implied that doing so at home, if they found out, counted. As was talking about it.
Because it was all classified, and just because it was in the NYT didn’t make it “not classified” and therefore going home and reading an article on the leaks was legally and morally equivalent to breaking into secure systems and reading top-secret stuff.
Clearly, they couldn’t have actually prosecuted anyone successfully. But revoke the (minor) clearances we needed to work on PC’s that accessed government internet — and thus make it impossible for us to work? (Or just outright fire us). Certainly.
But in the meantime, googling his name would potentially get you fired. Any website that contained his name got automatically black-listed.
Hence why I found the leaks from the Congressional Committee hilarious (I was keenly aware of how easy it was to claim something was classified, even something as innocuous as a quite from a newspaper).Report
– – – .-. . -.. -.–?Report
Mmmm… love that nothingburger taste. With just a hint of that old “Great penis hunt ’99” flavor on it.Report
I think the next leak to be jumped on with both feet and no awareness of having been fooled before will be the revelation that Bill Clinton’s penis was personally typing in the names of spies and sending them to Russia and North Korea and Iran and Saddam Hussein.. All while Hillary was murdering someone who looked like Vince Foster and having lesbian sex with her aides while being just a total bitch to small children and kicking dogs.Report
The FBI leaked that there was something there.
The CIA is leaking that there is nothing there.
Someone in the FBI hates Hillary.
Someone in the CIA thinks that Hillary is best for business.Report
Clinton complains about being the victim of an out of control bureaucracy, in a debate where the most resolute pledge is to preserve govt bureaucracy (the VA)Report
Because, speaking as someone who’s work in and with DoD contractors for years, privatizing the VA is an incredibly bad idea. Not only do you give the Halliburtons of the world yet another way to screw the military and the taxpayers out of $$$, but when it comes down to caring for wounded vets or protecting shareholders interests, the shareholders will win. Every. Single. Time.Report
I think it’s simpler than that — there’s always someone with an axe to grind, and the media these days is pretty lazy about fact-checking — it’s all about the scoop. (That’s not even getting into the fun you can have by being highly selective about which facts you release, like the GOP leaks from the committee on it. As a simple example — there was a guy in my office that got drug tested for cause. He was clean, and it turns out the ’cause’ was someone who disliked him. That someone got fired. But you could say, quite truthfully, that the original man was ‘suspected of drug use’.).
And god, the way anonymous sources work — back in the whole run-up Iraq 2.0, I’m pretty sure I read stories in which News Outlet A would report “Anonymous sources say X” (two people coordinating) and then News Outlet B would confirm it with “Additional sources confirm it” and it being the same two people.
And I know I’ve read breakdowns of stories in which an actual politician or appointed official would say something off the record or have it leaked via an aide, just so a reporter would ask him on the record. It’d get played as multiple sources, even if it was the same freakin’ guy. “An official confirms anonymous leaks about X…”
Because there’s no time for research. So when I see the same exact story, especially a partisan one, pop up and get disproved, and the cycle continuing with variations of the same exact story — I just don’t get why people don’t start acting a little cynical about at least THAT story.
Boy Who Cried Wolf. Lucy and the football. However you want to frame it, it’s amazing that some people are just so happy to be fooled again and again.Report