Mr. Putin and Hillary Clinton’s e-mails

When an encrypted U.S. government communication system is tapped into by hackers or a foreign intelligence service, U.S. counter-intelligence officers must assume the worst-case scenario; that is, anything which might be useful to the attacker was taken. When an unencrypted system is tapped, no assumption is needed because there is not a single credible reason to think that an enemy power failed to tap the system or that anything less than everything was taken.

Mrs. Clinton’s unencrypted e-mail communications were stolen by all of America’s enemies — Russia, China, Israel, Iran, probably the Islamic State, etc. They also have stolen all of the e-mails that other senior administration officials, civil servants, generals, and intelligence officers sent to her, thereby becoming partners in what seems clearly to be her criminal behavior. (NB: It has been ignored by the media, but any administration official — including Obama — who knowingly did official business with Mrs. Clinton via her unencrypted channel also seems guilty of criminal activity.) To think otherwise is to display the same arrogant stupidity that her husband and each of his presidential successors did when they assumed Bin Laden and the Islamists were a finite number of religion-crazed, medieval neanderthals who did not mean what they said and could do no serious harm to the United States.

The use America’s enemies will make of Mrs. Clinton’s e-mails will be pretty much as follows:

  • Because the Russians, Chinese, Iranians, Israelis, and others have all of Hillary’s unencrypted e-mails, as well as those e-mails sent to her by others in the same channel, their problem is not if to use them against her, but only the timing of when to use them.
  • For each of these foreign governments it would be singularly unproductive to use this great, once-in-a-lifetime intelligence asset before the presidential election. Foreign leaders would gain little but the acute embarrassment of Mrs. Clinton and the outgoing Obama regime from pre-election publishing in either their domestic media or via leaks to Western journalists.
  • The impact of pre-election publication, moreover, might cost Mrs. Clinton the presidency and she is — far and away — the favorite candidate of the Russians, Chinese, Israelis, and Iranians precisely because they have each stolen her communications and can use them to compromise her in the very same Oval Office that played host to feminist-hero Bill’s sexual suborning of a young female intern.
  • Mr. Putin and his regime, among U.S. enemies, are in the cat-bird seat in regard to blackmailing Mrs. Clinton because they have her e-mails and they know what Hillary, Bill, the State Department, and the Clinton Foundation did to advance the interests of Russia and other foreign states and companies — and the Clinton’s personal wealth — while she was Secretary of State.

In sum, Mrs. Clinton’s e-mails are a treasure of personal and — given it is the Clintons — almost certainly salacious information. As this is written, foreign leaders and their intelligence services may well know who Bill and/or Hillary are sleeping with, which of Secretary Clinton’s official decisions were made to benefit a foreign nation and/or the Clintons, how many movie stars were exchanging gossipy e-mails with her while Ambassador Stevens and his team died, what Obama administration scandals she knew of and helped the president and other cabinet members to evade, what means she used to undercut Obama to advance her political aspirations, etc. If such matters are discussed in Hillary’s e-mails, moreover, the e-mails sent to her will give the public equal insight into the unsavory/illegal activities of her correspondents.

Also, and more important, Mrs. Clinton’s e-mails and the responses to them are a treasure for U.S. enemies because they deal with her official diplomatic activities, as well as present and planned U.S. government policies — and those of our allies — that pertain to them and their interests. Those e-mails, too, are being reviewed by Mr. Putin, Mr. Rouhani, and their minions to identify which can best be used to threaten “President” Clinton with exposure if she refuses to compromise U.S. national interests and foreign-policy objectives.

When attempts by foreign governments are made to suborn an elected Mrs. Clinton — and they will be — she will be faced with two choices. First, she can refuse to cooperate and immediately and publicly inform Americans about the matter in her resignation speech, thereby destroying much of the value of the e-mails to America’s enemies. Second, she can agree to be suborned, accept large tranches of well-laundered cash from her new foreign employer; and pretend to be looking out for America while actively undercutting U.S. security.

Of the two, the latter choice seems more likely because of (a) the long and well-documented public record of Mrs. Clinton’s and her husband’s seemingly insatiable greed; (b) the reality that she and he are quite comfortable with and experienced at working for a foreign power, given the decades they have been taking “campaign contributions” from U.S.-citizen Israel-Firsters in return for compromising U.S. security on Israel’s behalf; and (c) the simple fact that if she cared a tinker’s damn about U.S. security and the republic’s survival she would have never, ever broken the law by using an unencrypted e-mail system for government business while secretary of state.

One must wonder how FBI Director Comey and the FBI and Attorney General Lynch and the Justice Department will ignore the foregoing reality when they refuse to indict the obviously guilty Mrs. Clinton? Oh, yes, I forgot, they are Democrats beholden to an anti-American Democratic president. As such the party and power must always come first, and all other Americans and their security, country, and liberty must always take the hindmost.

Lois Lerner redux, I suppose you might call it. Or, you might just call it tyranny.

Author: Michael F. Scheuer

Michael F. Scheuer worked at the CIA as an intelligence officer for 22 years. He was the first chief of its Osama bin Laden unit, and helped create its rendition program, which he ran for 40 months. He is an American blogger, historian, foreign policy critic, and political analyst.