What Does David Petraeus’s Case Have to Say About Hillary Clinton’s E-mail Account?

Earlier this week General David Petraeus agreed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge of mishandling classified information.  General Petraeus gave Paula Broadwell, his biographer (and mistress), access to eight black notebooks that contained highly classified information from his time in Afghanistan.  He let her look at them in connection with the biography she was writing about him.  While no classified information appeared in the book (according to the agreed-upon “Factual Basis” filed in court by the Department of Justice and General Petraeus), he showed her the classified information, and he lied to the FBI about it.¹

The Factual Basis filed in General Petraeus’s case is of special interest because it contains statements that are of interest with respect to one of the other big stories of the week: Hillary Clinton’s rather unusual way of handling her e-mails while she was Secretary of State.  As the stories have reported, former Secretary Clinton never used, or even had, a government e-mail address while she was Secretary of State.  Instead, all of her e-mails went through a private e-mail system with a registered address at her home in Chappaqua, New York.  In addition, former Secretary Clinton did not provide copies of her e-mails from her time in office to the government until the State Department affirmatively asked for them almost two years after she left office.  And even then, she only provided copies of e-mails that her people decided belonged to the government.  As far as the news reports indicate, State Department officials did not look at the e-mails to see if they agreed that former Secretary Clinton had turned over everything that was required.

So, how does General Petraeus’s case relate to this? 

First, according to the Factual Basis in General Petraeus’s case, in confidentiality agreements that General Petraeus signed with the Department of Defense, he acknowledged that failure to return confidential information upon demand of the government or upon conclusion of his employment or other relationship with the government would be a violation of law.  Assuming that at least some of the e-mails that former Secretary Clinton received while she was Secretary of State contained classified information, it would seem that her failure to provide these e-mails to the government promptly upon leaving office might be a similar violation – unless she has been given permission to retain them.  In addition, one wonders whether she has the right to even retain copies of the e-mails if they contain classified information.

Second, the Factual Basis notes that General Petraeus personally retained the eight black notebooks from his time in Afghanistan and did not provide them to his DOD historian.  Once again, former Secretary Clinton kept her e-mails and did not provide until a specific request was made by the Department of State.  (It would appear the General Petraeus’s case was worse in that, when he left the Central Intelligence Agency in November of 2012, he affirmed in a document he signed that he had no classified information in his possession, even though he still had the notebooks.)

Third, the Factual Basis notes that General Petraeus intentionally retained classified information at his home (and gave them to his biographer for a few days) while aware that both his house and where Ms. Broadwell was staying were unauthorized locations for storage and retention of classified information.  The question is whether the storage location of former Secretary Clinton’s e-mails is or was authorized for the storage and retention of classified information.

Finally, The Washington Post, in its article about General Petraeus’s plea agreement, noted that, in 1996, then-CIA Director John Deutch had to resign after it was discovered he had put highly classified information on a home computer that was hooked up to the Internet.  Once again, one wonders what the security situation was for former Secretary Clinton’s e-mail system.  It was clearly connected to the Internet.  Did it have an adequate security system?  Did Department of State security people review the system, on a periodic basis, to make sure it continued to be safe?

All in all, some interesting questions.
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¹ You can find a link to the Agreed Facts document in General Petraeus’ case in this Washington Post article on the plea agreement.