Hillary Clinton is bringing her email scandal to Miami. Far be it from me to question the wisdom of such a move. It's her campaign after all.
Turns out the big-ticket attraction Monday at Hillary's Invitation-Only Miami Briefing for Donors and Fund-raiser, coinciding with the opening of her Miami Beach field office, is none other than former State Department official Wendy Sherman.
You remember Wendy Sherman, don't you?
This from an email: "Ambassador Sherman served as Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs at the U.S. Department of State. She led the U.S. negotiating team and was a central player in reaching a successful conclusion of the Iran nuclear agreement. Prior to that role, she worked as a close advisor to then Secretary of State Madeleine Albright on every major foreign policy and national security issue, and also managed numerous special assignments including negotiations on nuclear non-proliferation.’” (Marc Caputo, “Florida Playbook,” Politico, 2/19/16)
But Sherman has done more than that. She famously threw a large arm over Hillary's shoulder in 2013 when she boasted about Secretary Clinton negotiating delicate Mid-East peace negotiations over her BlackBerry while at the UN General Assembly two years earlier -- calling it something "that would never be on an unclassified system ..."
SHERMAN: “Now we have BlackBerries, and it has changed the way diplomacy is done. Things appear on your Blackberries that would never be on an unclassified system, but you’re out traveling, you’re trying to negotiate something, you want to communicate with people, it’s the fastest way to do it. My favorite story about this is the U.N. General Assembly, two years ago, Secretary Clinton was at the E.U., it was then the ‘E.U. 27’ meeting, where all of the foreign ministers were right along the long table, she was on one side of the table, Catherine Ashton was on the other side of the table, the representative for the European Union, they were trying to, during that U.N. General Assembly negotiate a Quartet Statement for Middle East peace, and so they sat there, as they were having the meeting, with their BlackBerries, transferring language back and forth between them and between their aides to multitask in quite a new fashion, to have the meeting and at the same time be working on the Quartet Statement.”
Have a look at the video below for yourself. Sherman was speaking at the American Foreign Service Association Conference, 2013.
The emails Sherman cited have now been deemed classified
“The State Department considered the correspondence sensitive enough that the department deemed some of those emails to now be classified, and officials redacted details before the emails were released to the public,” according to an Ed Henry video Jan. 26 on FOX News.
But absolutely nothing Sherman thought was so modern, efficient and worthy of Secretary of State Clinton was right. Nothing.
Information written or spoken to U.S. officials by their foreign counterparts in confidence is considered "foreign government information," which is "born classified." Period.
“In the small fraction of emails made public so far, Reuters has found at least 30 email threads from 2009, representing scores of individual emails, that include what the State Department's own ‘Classified’ stamps now identify as so-called 'foreign government information.' The U.S. government defines this as any information, written or spoken, provided in confidence to U.S. officials by their foreign counterparts.” This from Jonathan Allen, “Exclusive: Dozens Of Clinton Emails Were Classified From The Start, U.S. Rules Suggest,” Reuters, Aug. 21, 2015.
And foreign government information must be “presumed” classified to protect national security and the integrity of diplomatic interactions, Allen said.
On Dec. 2, 2009, The Foreign Affairs Manual Was updated To state, “Classified processing and/or classified conversation on a PDA is prohibited.” This from “12 FAM 683 Personal Digital Assistants,” U.S. Department Of State Foreign Affairs Manual, 12/02/2010; Web Archive, 3/9/12.
It's hard to believe neither highly placed State Department official, Hillary Clinton or Wendy Sherman, knew this.
In a Feb. 7, 2014 State Department Press Briefing, State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki said processing or discussing classified information on a BlackBerry is prohibited by department policy.
QUESTION: “On the issue of how you discuss things, do State Department officials routinely use encrypted phones, mobile phones, for their conversations so that comments like that one do not become public?”
JEN PSAKI: “Well, Arshad, for obvious reasons, I can't outline for you everything that we do. I can tell you that data encryption is available for all Department of State employee-issued, government-owned BlackBerry devices, regardless of rank. All Department of State government-owned BlackBerry devices have data encryption. However, they don't have voice encryption. And of course, as you know -- I know you didn't ask this, but just to add one more additional point – classified processing and classified conversation on a personal digital assisted device is prohibited in accordance with Department policy, which, of course, is not what this was, but just to add a point.” ...
QUESTION: “OK. So you're not allowed to discuss classified material on a device. Correct?”
PSAKI: “On an unclass -- right. Exactly.”
Disturbing that now, as the leading presidential candidate for the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton chooses not to recognize Sherman's missteps and instead make her a big celebrity in Miami.
Reach Nancy Smith at nsmith@sunshinestatenews.com or at 228-282-2423.
