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OPINION

Hillary, It’s Not About an Email ‘Address’

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com.
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Having learned well from her husband Bill and his advisors during the many scandals of his administration, in particular the Monica Lewinski scandal which made famous the phrase, “it depends on what the definition of ‘is,’ is,” Hillary Clinton continues to defend her use of a private email server during television and radio interviews with various news reporters using similar tactics as her husband used. And, unfortunately, she also depends very heavily on the basic ignorance on the part of the American people about these types of matters.

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At every opportunity Hillary tries to explain away her violations of government regulations and numerous federal laws by claiming that “using a personal e-mail was allowed,” and was also used by prior Secretaries of State.

It’s typical of the ‘Clinton way’ to try to confuse or muddy up the issue through the use of ‘creative language.’ And, sadly for the American people, most news reporters are letting Hillary get away with it, either through their own ignorance of the issues or their own personal bias. Likely both.

Hillary tries to compare her actions with that of some of her predecessors at the State Department, claiming that Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice also used “personal email addresses.” Typical of all Democrats and the Clintons in particular, trying to defend bad behavior by pointing out other supposed bad behavior is a regular tactic. The difference is that what Hillary’s predecessors did has absolutely no comparison to what Hillary Clinton did during her tenure as Secretary of State.

As anyone who has ever worked for the federal government since the invention of email will tell you, particularly those who worked with highly classified materials, what Hillary Clinton is alleged to have done has nothing to do with using a personal e-mail “address,” as she is always careful to say.

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Every single American citizen can create a private e-mail address using ‘Yahoo,’ ‘Hotmail,’ or ‘Gmail’ sites if they choose, or by creating their own through the various computer office products that are available. There’s also no prohibition against government employees having a personal e-mail address. Never has been.

The difference, which Hillary Clinton continues to try to hide and cover up by using ‘creative language’ is that what she did was to use a “personal server” to set up and process her e-mail communications. A “server” is not the same thing as an “e-mail address.” They are two completely different things.

A server is the type of computer equipment and operating system that sends and receives e-mails addressed to various individuals either within or outside of a network. The official government servers that handle unclassified and classified information are quite different from that which was being used by Hillary Clinton.

Particularly with regards to the sharing of classified information. Those classified “servers” are a completely separate system, and are protected with encryption so that the information sent, received or stored is protected from intercept and exploitation by America’s enemies. The two systems are incompatible and cannot connect or intermingle with each other.

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Classified information simply cannot be sent from the classified server system to any unclassified system. It is electronically impossible. Classified information would have to be excised in some way from the classified system and then resent over the unclassified system—a serious violation of government regulations and federal law.

Communications security professionals in our government go to great lengths to try to protect our government and military communications from foreign ‘prying eyes,’ understanding that our enemies, and likely even some of our friends, have an interest in what senior administration officials are thinking or discussing.

Much can be gleaned even from the personal ‘unclassified’ exchanges taking place between individuals, such as identifying those who are involved in developing government policy and their exact positions within the government. In addition, any possible vulnerabilities that can potentially be exploited by foreign intelligence services would be important, including other personal information about family members or friends. And of special interest would be the discussion of any ‘classified’ information on an unsecured system. Foreign adversaries would be very interested in the types of information normally discussed in classified channels by senior government policy-makers.

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If negotiating positions and talking points are known by our adversaries ahead of time, then they can certainly prepare their response. What if the Chinese know ahead of time what our final position would be during any negotiations over Chinese expansion in the South China Sea? Or what if Russia knew ahead of time that we had no intention of preventing Russia from annexing the Baltic nations? Or even our supposed friends like Mexico, what if they knew our negotiating position on upcoming trade talks? Those countries would be at a great advantage during any discussions and in their planning of military operations knowing ahead of time what the United States was prepared to do in response.

By discussing these types of issues over an unencrypted, unprotected personal “server” Hillary Clinton seriously compromised America’s national security. And while she continues to play word games by substituting “personal e-mail address” for “personal server,” the reality of how much damage she has caused may never be known: our enemies aren’t going to volunteer how much they benefitted from reading Hillary’s mail. And they certainly aren’t going to acknowledge that they were doing just that.

We’re trying to do the same thing to them, and we could only hope for a treasure trove of national secrets like that Hillary Clinton provided. What Hillary Clinton and her senior advisors did was give a huge gift to our enemies. They understood what they were doing was outside the law, but they didn’t care. Putting Americans at risk didn’t matter to them—only supporting Hillary Clinton’s personal ambitions mattered.

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As the FBI wraps up its investigations, one can only hope that soon we’ll be seeing her senior staff, and Hillary Clinton herself doing the “perp-walk” on the evening news, perhaps followed quickly by her husband Bill as a result of the Clinton Foundation money laundering investigation. And America will finally once and for all be able to put behind us the sad era of Bill and Hillary Clinton.

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