As I awake to yet another breathless, urgent diary by a Bernie supporter raising more “serious” questions about the emails on Hillary Clinton’s emails from the WaPo, I think this analysis by the AP offers some useful counter points to the more clinical presentation in the WaPo piece. It was released about the same time. That WaPo piece is filled with numbers, seemingly damning quotes from (of course) anonymous sources, and the number 104 (the number of emails retroactively redacted by State that Hillary herself sent.
The article presents a state department led by Hillary that struggles with the strictures of classification weighed against the very real need of actually, you know, COMMUNICATING with each other to get things done (more below). It presents a very human HRC who is a bit befuddled by technology while sharply understanding how certain things can be communicated in broad terms to allow sending to avoid potentially strict classification.
It also has this key paragraph, buried well below the lede, which to me tells the most likely motivation for Clinton’s choice of using a private server:
The department's technology is "so antiquated that NO ONE uses a State-issued laptop and even high officials routinely end up using their home email accounts to be able to get their work done quickly and effectively," policy chief Anne-Marie Slaughter laments in 2011.
There you have it — cash strapped government agencies, hindered by small government mindsets, use antiquated technologies that are slow, hindering productivity of employees, and not really guaranteed to be secure.
*******
So what about that awareness of security?
Hillary seems to understand in one instance that a particular email could be considered a security concern and is mad about it:
Most of the time, Clinton and aides appeared keenly aware of the limitations of operating over an unclassified, nongovernment account. Sometimes they were frustrated by the constraints.
In a February 2010 message, Clinton exclaimed: "It's a public statement! Just email it." Sent moments later, the document merely said U.S. and British officials would cooperate to promote peace. "Well that is certainly worthy of being top secret," Clinton responded sarcastically.
Lots of GOP were hoping there would be a Benghazi smoking gun in these emails. But: crickets.
The GOP went full Blumenthal on Clinton in the hearings. Sidney comes up as a player here, not surprisingly. The article indicates he got no special treatment, and while she did take some advice from him, she clearly did not take all:
"This one strains credulity," Clinton wrote about a report claiming French and British intelligence services were trying to cut up Libya. "A thin conspiracy theory," Sullivan responded. Gene Cretz, U.S. ambassador there at the time, termed another such memo "odd."
The article lists a wide range of other external figures who offered advice.
Now onto that more human side. There are emails where Hillary betrays her lack of tech savvy. On using an IPad, for example:
At one point, she asks her communications adviser how to charge her iPad and update an app. Asked if she has wireless Internet, the secretary replies: "I don't know if I have wi-fi. How do I find out?"
She has a good sense of humor — communicating with Sen. Barbara Mikulski:
And after receiving the colorful complaints of a former Capitol colleague, Sen. Barbara Mikulski of Maryland, Clinton offers empathy, referencing the musical, "The Music Man": "Oh, Barb, we got trouble w a capital "T'' in River City."
On when she tried to reach the White House by dialing directly herself, only to have an operator question her:
Clinton tries in February 2010 to call the White House herself, only to reach a disbelieving operator. She resigns to calling "like a proper and properly dependent Secretary of State — no independent dialing allowed."
Finally, and this may be hard for those to believe for those who want to portray Hillary as a Lady Macbeth type figure, she has aides and friends who genuinely like her. You could cynically read these comments as sycophantic, but I read them as spontaneous gestures of appreciation for a remarkable person:
"I'm being flooded with emails about how you rocked," Abedin writes after her boss testified in January 2013 before two congressional panels on the Benghazi attack.
She wasn't kidding.
"Twitterverse abuzz with Hillary-kvelling," Brookings Institution president Strobe Talbott wrote, using the Yiddish word for gushing praise.
"You looked fabulous," Abedin chimed in.
After a meme of Clinton reading her BlackBerry became a sensation, Mills told her boss: "You look cute."
Hillary, a brilliant human being who made the choice of using a private server to help get things done in a state department bogged down by archaic IT. That is my story of the email “scandal”, and I am sticking to it.