Pirate's Cove

Is it in the realm of possibility that the Secretary Of State, a Cabinet level official, never once sent or received classified information in email? Did she require people to hand deliver and/or fax that information? Did she only send and receive info on TV shows and what’s for dinner? No, probably not, and surely not. She most certainly received and sent information about the workings of government, which, while much might not be secret, is certainly sensitive.

(NY Post) Former State Department security officials don’t buy Hillary Clinton’s latest alibi that she couldn’t tell that government e-mails — which she improperly, if not illegally, kept for several years on an unsecured home server — contained top-secret information because they lacked official markings and weren’t classified until later.

Such messages contain sensitive “keywords” distinguishing them from unclassified information, even if the material didn’t bear a classified heading as she claims.

The secretary would have known better, the department ­officials say, because she was trained to understand the difference when she was “read in” on procedures to ID and handle classified information by diplomatic-security officials in 2009.

Clinton also went through a so-called “read-off” when she left ­office in 2013. In that debriefing, security officials reminded her of her duty to return all classified documents, including ones in which the classification status is “uncertain,” which would have included the e-mails stored on her private server — which she only this month turned over to authorities. The read-off would have included her signing a nondisclosure agreement.

“Once she resigned as secretary, she needed to return classified documents and other government-owned documents, which in this case would have included the server,” veteran Diplomatic Security Service Special Agent Raymond Fournier said.

Ah, but there’s the question: did she sign the form regarding turning all docs and materials? The State Department cannot find the form, called an OF-109, and is “fairly certain she did not.” Did she sign a non-disclosure form? Did she even participate in a “read-off”?

“I did not receive any material marked or designated classified, which is the way you know whether something is [classified],” she said last week, revising an earlier claim that “there is no classified material.”

“That’s total BS,” said retired Army Col. Larry Mrozinski, who served almost four years as a ­senior military adviser and security manager in the State Department under both Clinton and Condoleezza Rice.

He says Clinton easily would have ID’d the material as classified based on “keywords and phrases” and the fact that the information came from foreign sources.

“TS/SCI is very serious and specific information that jumps out at you and screams ‘classified,’ ” Mrozinski said. “The sources [of the information] also drive and signal sensitivity.”

Heck, did she even participate in a “read-in”? The super secret material should never be in electronic form, only printed, and never discussed through electronic methods. Yet, several of the emails recovered contained that material. Not that Hillary or her aides cared. Nor did Hillary care that she was using a home-brew server that put sensitive information and the workings of the State Department, and potentially other federal agencies, at risk.

Meanwhile, the Editorial Board of the USA Today takes Hillary to task, reminding her that this is no laughing matter. They note that, at the very least, she was reckless and showed poor judgement. Not qualities needed for POTUS.