I Triggered a State Department Leak More Serious Than Hillary Clinton’s...
In February 1987, at the height of the Cold War, a top official at State caused a leak of extremely sensitive material, classified above top secret. It was distributed far and wide—to nearly every country in the world. And for that serious information breach—much worse than anything Clinton is accused of—he received nothing more than a letter warning him to be more circumspect in the future.
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One month later, after much internal deliberation within Foggy Bottom, Spiers got his punishment: “Spokesman Charles E. Redman said the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security will issue a letter to Ronald Spiers, undersecretary of state for management, advising him to exercise more caution in the future,” the AP reported. Redman called the incident “an infraction.” Importantly, he also said that a State Department analysis had concluded that none of the type could be read, even with advanced equipment—and thus no harm had been done. The bureau is under the jurisdiction of the undersecretary, and the press noted the irony of, in effect, Spiers’ sending the letter to himself, as both chief security officer and the department’s foremost security miscreant.
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Thirty years later, you’d never know that Clinton’s violation was less serious than Spiers’. The media coverage is more insistent; government officials are more concerned. The departmental inspector general has chimed in critically, and the FBI and the Department of Justice have been brought into the case. And yet, look closer at the facts, and you will see there’s no evidence that Clinton’s email scandal constituted an information leak at all. None of the emails she sent or received contained material that was classified at the time, and there’s no evidence that anybody but the intended recipients ever read them.
Yes, Clinton violated a government record-keeping policy and showed poor judgment—but, as in the case of Spiers’ carelessness in the face of much higher stakes, there’s no evidence that national security was jeopardized because of Clinton’s actions. If Spiers wasn’t criminally prosecuted for his worse “infraction,” why would Hillary Clinton be prosecuted for hers?
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I Triggered a State Department Leak More Serious Than Hillary Clintons - POLITICO Magazine
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