With each passing news day, the scandal deepens around Hillary Clinton’s unauthorized removal of U.S. secrets during her tenure as Secretary of State.
The process of this unauthorized extraction of U.S. secrets by Mrs. Clinton makes one thing impossibly clear. This conspiracy was anything but convenient to Mrs. Clinton. Contrary to what she disingenuously claimed, convenience was most definitely not the reason for her actions. To remove top secret information and hundreds of other classified documents from the government’s care, she had to risk jail and even get others to collude in this process.
For nearly eight months, I observe that the most important question is still not being asked of Hillary Clinton and her partisans. Why was Clinton doing this?
As anyone knows it is impossible for Hillary Clinton to end up with a colossal stash of U.S. national secrets on her personal server by accident. She could not simply email herself most of this information. She had to engage others to do that which put them at obvious risk of breaking the espionage act and ending up in jail. It is absurd that the F.B.I. director Comey and several pundits continue to give her a pass on the absolutely bogus and irrational excuse that it was all done for the sake of convenience.
The real question is why was Hillary Clinton doing this? Here is one theory: She was trafficking in U.S. National Security secrets for personal gain, money. She was also making this information available to Bill Clinton and The Clinton Foundation people. Their information being extremely valuable to intelligence services and private corporations was being rewarded through contributions to The Clinton Foundation. The Clinton Foundation essentially was being used to launder payments for influence and information under the guise of a legitimate charitable purpose.
The Clinton National Security Scandal is a more accurate name for what is occurring than the cynical euphemism, “ The Clinton E-mail scandal.” E-mail scandals are a dime a dozen.
Her unprecedented actions are materially no different than the actions of any person (formally charged for espionage) who provides or makes available secrets of the highest caliber to a host of “contributors.”
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It matters little, that someone trafficking in U.S. secrets may not have been enlisted formally by a foreign government. Trafficking in U.S. National security secrets is exactly what these notorious spies were doing and in this regard it is becoming apparently clear, that Clinton’s actions are really all that any mole or spy would have to do to sell or profit from revealing U.S. secrets.
Allegedly, the Clinton breach also contained names of our human assets and their methods, endangering thus their lives and indeed making available by her actions the most coveted information sought by foreign intelligence services.
Selling Secrets in the Age of Cyber Space
From a philosophical point of view, the essence of spying and treason (trafficking in U.S. National Security secrets) requires that fundamentally two necessary actions take place:
1. The spy or traitor has to accomplish the removal in an unauthorized manner of sensitive information, classified information, or, even graver, top secret information, from its rightful owner, namely the U.S. government. Indeed Clinton had authority to read the information--she had access. But she certainly did not have the authority to remove top secret information and put it on an unsecured server, or allow others not authorized, access to U.S. National secrets.
Stealing information, or removing the information from its proper owner (The U.S. government) without proper authorization is half of the operation required for a mole to betray secrets.
Most information mercenaries and spies have licit access to the information, but they certainly do not have permission to remove it or make it their own and certainly they are not allowed to put it on an unsecured servers where the enemies of America can come and collect the information.
2. The second necessary action for a person profiteering in U.S. intelligence secrets is to manage to make available the illicitly gathered secrets in her possession to foreign intelligence services and other entities or individuals that are seeking this information. The individual must carry out the actual transfer of the information (or make it possible for others to collect that information) or simply talk about it with interested parties.
But notice that step number two—making the classified information available to our enemies or to unauthorized institutions or individuals—is one of the very risky aspects of profiteering from information or worse, betraying one’s nation. Having to make a dead drop, meet the counter intelligence officer, leaving signals, and even communicating with one’s handlers—each consists of a physical action that
enormously increases the risk of capture for the traitor. Many a spy has been caught delivering or collecting a drop.
The act of transmitting or making available the information is always a very high-risk operation. But in the age of cyberspace possibilities, step #2, the physical dead drop of information, is no longer necessary.
In fact today, an information mercenary does not actually have to incriminate herself or take enormous risks by actually delivering top secret materials to unauthorized parties. She simply can make it available on an unsecure personal server in her own house or elsewhere and the foreign intelligence services will come and hack or access the unsecured server in the shadows of cyber anonymity in order to collect the cyber drop.
This cyber drop is all that is needed to complete the transaction. The cyber drop of classified information into an unsecured server is analogous to the physical drop previously needed or carried out in a remote or secret location. A cyber drop (placing secrets in an unsecured server) is the totality of what a treasonous dead drop would consist of today for a mole. In fact the receiving party to the treasonous information does not even need to take the information with him. He simply copies it, or reads it. In fact they do not even need to hack the personal server as the individual putting classified and top-secret information on that server can also give them a password so they can access the information.
Clinton the Perfect Subject for Blackmail from Our Enemies
This possibility is so serious that it is amazing Clinton is still running for president and indeed laughing the matter off. That Hillary Clinton and apparently her assistants still hold security clearances is beyond comprehension.
But there is more. What will happen if Clinton is elected president of the U.S. and she flies over for a meeting with say, Vladimir Putin and upon arrival she is informed privately that the Russians have her emails. This, if made public, would be her political undoing and most likely secure jail time. Since Clinton will cover up this fact, she will clearly thereafter be in their pocket; they will own her. Clinton not only has apparently done the unthinkable but she is at present regardless of other considerations, the likely subject for blackmail.
If consequences of Mrs. Clinton’s actions, as director Comey seems to think, are not necessary, then what spy worth his mettle would not be prepared to suffer this to achieve his ends by doing exactly what Mrs. Clinton has done? If the Secretary of State can get away with something that materially does not differ from actual spying, why would not any lawyer defending a spy that used the Clinton methodology to sell or reveal U.S. secrets, not argue that his client should not be punished to any greater extent than Mrs. Clinton? If to take classified information and place it on an unsecured server is all that a spy needs to do to complete a dead drop, how are Mrs. Clinton’s actions not creating a lethal precedent in our security apparatus?
But the erasing of tracks could go further. Once the private server of a potential spy has classified materials on it, it certainly becomes government property. But what if a suspect is so brazen that after being forced to turn over the server returns it blank? This is like trying to dispose of evidence when being chased by the police. Clinton had her personal server wiped (not with a cloth). Why?
The Disappearing Money Trail
The astonishing leeway thus far given to Mrs. Clinton while Secretary of State has in another way cleared the path for covert operations of moles and traitors within our government and security agencies.
Why would a mole not simply establish a foundation claiming a charitable purpose and receive remuneration for his services through this establishment? It need not even be a formal arrangement with a foreign government to sell secrets. One side simply provides information on an unsecured personal server or talks about it at fundraising meetings of his foundation and the foreign interested parties keep on giving “gifts” to the foundation to keep the relationship with these mercenaries going.
As long as they keep on donating money to the foundation, the flow of information continues. The risks are minimized in every way. Apparently, Bill Clinton and the Clinton foundation also had access to much of this information. Why?
I am stating here that any traitor or mole can now reproduce exactly what Mrs. Clinton has done and successfully spy against the United States. If Mrs. Clinton walks away with minor or no consequences, it is quite probable that real traitors will follow her steps, and their lawyers will place Clinton’s actions at the center of their lines of defense. Mrs. Clinton has therefore laid the perfect path for espionage from within our own governmental structures.
And that being the case, should a presidential candidate potentially trafficking in U.S. secrets and likely subject to blackmail be seeking the highest office in the land?
Foreign intelligence services are undoubtedly paying close attention to the consequences of Mrs. Clinton’s alleged breach of law and protocol. And it is reasonable to believe that if this method proves to be a low opportunity cost way to spy, then many a mole will simply follow the path now laid before us by Mrs. Clinton.
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