Tag Archives: foreign policy

Who’s In Charge?

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…of our foreign policy—us, or foreign entities?

Here’s the latest, against the backdrop of Russian reestablishment of an archipelago of its Cold War military bases across the Arctic?

After invading Ukraine, Russia pulled out of the Arctic Council, a consortium of eight countries that includes the US.

In response, there’s this [emphasis added]:

Asked about Russia’s recent moves in the Arctic, State Department spokesman Mark Toner said: “And so do we have concerns specifically about Russia? I would say…we have concerns about how militaries conduct themselves in the Arctic, but that’s for all of the Arctic Council members to discuss.“

Hmm….

Clinton’s Emails

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State released 7,000 more of Hilary Clinton’s emails, those…documents…transmitted via her private, unprotected email server. One hundred fifty of them contained classified information.

State Department spokesman Mark Toner said the emails in question were “subsequently upgraded” to classified. He stressed that none of the emails was considered classified at the time.

This is so utterly disingenuous as to be outright lies. The material in the emails were not “subsequently upgraded” to classified; they were only marked classified after the fact. The material was classified all along.

[S]ome of the information on Clinton’s server was inherently classified. Fox’s analysts cited a memo transmitting information provided by foreign diplomats about Sudan peace talks.

As Shannen Coffin explained, because such information is substantive and comes from foreign diplomats, it is “born classified.”

Information from other sources also is born classified. Recall the first set of emails discovered to be classified (if unmarked as such): they passed along information derived from Talent Keyhole programs.

There are two things about this. All the folks sending, receiving, and reading those emails—TO, FROM, CC, and BCC senders and receivers (and relayers—that’s one reason why the email headers (available only in the electronic copies) are so important), every single one of them—knew or should have known that the material was classified, regardless of their markings. All the folks sending, receiving, or reading those emails should have squawked to the classification authorities of the sender’s office and of State, and to the Security facilities of both offices, about the security violations those emails represented, both by their lack of markings and by their existence on an unclassified, unprotected server.

The other thing is that the mere transmission of such information via unsecured means, or the mere retention of them, however briefly, on unsecured media, is a felony, whether or not the information was properly marked. Everyone in that sequence of transmittal—TO, FROM, CC, and BCC senders and receivers and relayers—who did not so report committed a felony.

Every single one.

What Really Happened?

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Regarding the cell phones used by Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills, both aides to Hillary Clinton during the latter’s stint as Secretary of State, and other devices,

[T]he State Department said in a court filing that BlackBerry devices used by two former Clinton aides during her time as secretary of state have most likely been destroyed or sold off by the agency.

The devices, used by Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin, have not been located by the agency, State Department Executive Secretary Joseph Macmanus wrote in a filing submitted in DC Federal Court, adding that the agency’s “standard procedure upon return of such devices is to perform a factory reset (which removes any user settings or configurations) and then to re-issue the device to another employee, to destroy it, or to excess it.”

“Because the devices issued to Ms Mills and Ms Abedin would have been outdated models, in accordance with standard operating procedures those devices would have been destroyed or excessed,” Macmanus wrote.

And

[Macmanus] also said that Clinton did not have a BlackBerry from the State Department or any other device. That means she did not have a department-issued device certified as secure, raising new security questions as the devices she carried would not have been government-encrypted.

The guy who currently sits in the SecState chair, John Kerry, chimed in through his State Spokesperson John Kirby:

…it is “standard practice” that when employees leave, their personal devices undergo a “factory reset,” as they’re often given to other employees.

“And it’s our understanding that that’s what happened in this case. It’s also likely that because this was a while, ago and that those devices were probably—may have been destroyed,”

“Most likely,” “standard procedure,” “standard practice,” “not State issued,” “often given,” “may have been….”

Yes, yes. We fully understand the speculations. Now stop stonewalling and evading: say what actually happened to the devices. Say, also, what device Clinton actually used and where it is, since you’ve known all along her device(s) weren’t government issued.

Another Clinton Lie

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Hillary Clinton’s campaign said Wednesday that emails on the private server she used when she was secretary of state contained material that is now classified, the clearest explanation thus far of an issue that has roiled her bid for the presidency.

At the same time, the campaign sought to play down the disclosure by saying the material had been retroactively classified out of an abundance of caution by US intelligence agencies.

“She was at worst a passive recipient of unwitting information that subsequently became deemed as classified,” said Brian Fallon, a spokesman for Mrs Clinton’s campaign.

This, of course is…nonsense. The material was classified at its inception, and the documents carrying the material was thereby classified at the documents’ creation. They were only marked classified after the fact, and after the material had been recognized—by others—as having been mishandled.

That the material had been being mishandled was well known to Clinton. She has said before that she understands the rules and requirements of handling classified material. That’s what makes her claims above, through her campaign, outright lies.

It’s Not a Mystery

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Except to Steve Chapman, writing in Real Clear Politics.

It’s a mystery why, after allegedly tricking us into giving them everything they wanted, the Iranians would be so eager to evade these easy terms.

Iran’s leadership wants nuclear weapons, and they’ll do what they need to do to get them: talk interminably about a “deal” that purports to restrict their access, for a time, and then disregard the terms of the deal in order to continue their development and building efforts apace. This just isn’t that hard to understand.

Let’s consider the threat of cheating. One complaint is that the accord allows Iran to delay inspections of some sites for up to 24 days or more, making it easy to clean them up before the inspectors arrive. In fact, it wouldn’t be easy, because nuclear materials linger—not for weeks, but for centuries.

Back in 2003, when it was suspected of conducting forbidden nuclear experiments at one facility, Iran blocked International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) monitors for more than six months. But when inspectors finally got in, they were able to detect telltale residues.

Couple things about this. In no particular order, the materials linger when they’re not cleaned up. Apparently Chapman thinks the Iranians are so stupid they learned nothing over the last dozen years from their less-than-effective cleanup efforts and being caught out.

From that incident those dozen years ago, no consequences ensued from the IAEA’s discovery. There’s little reason to believe a different outcome to any cheating today.

And, what Chapman carefully elided: the Iranians cheated then. Along those lines:

We don’t have to prove guilt. Iran has to prove innocence.

No, they don’t. They don’t have to do anything; they can continue their activities unaltered by any discovery of cheating. Never mind that no consequence can ensue from the cheating until it has been demonstrated that Iran has failed its proof.

But take the worst-case scenario. Suppose Iran commits a violation and our partners devise some ingenious way to block sanctions. Then what? The US would still have the ultimate recourse: military action.

Indeed. But what Chapman ignored is that the longer the delay on taking that ultimate recourse, the more expensive and the more chancy of success it will get.