David Petraeus and Hillary Clinton. One Was Convicted and Faces Demotion. The Other Is Running for President.

A couple of exclusive stories yesterday combine to raise a very interesting question about Hillary Clinton’s email system.

An exclusive story at The Daily Beast reported that Defense Secretary Ash Carter is reviewing General David Petraeus’s misuse of classified information and is considering whether to retroactively demote General Petraeus, even though he officially retired almost four years ago.  According to The Daily Beast:

“Carter is said to be concerned that because he has recommended other generals be reduced in rank for actions not becoming an officer, he’ll be seen as inconsistent if he doesn’t do the same for Petraeus.  The decision is as much about timing and politics as it is Petraeus’s own transgressions. 

‘This is about Ash Carter, not David Petraeus,’ the defense official said.”

Fox News had the other exclusive.  They reported that, according to an unclassified letter from the Intelligence Community Inspector General, I. Charles McCullough III, a review of emails on Hillary Clinton’s personal email server identified several dozen additional classified emails. 

While both stories have seen been reported by other parts of the media (The Wall Street Journal, for example, had an article about the Hillary Clinton story and an editorial about General Petraeus), you really need to look at the original stories, especially the one on General Petraeus, to see the connection – and the similarity – between the two situations.

According to The Daily Beast:

“Petraeus pleaded guilty last year to giving [Paula] Broadwell [, his biographer and mistress,] eight notebooks that he compiled while serving as commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan and that he knew contained classified information.  The notebooks held some of the most sensitive kinds of military and intelligence secrets, including the identities of covert officers, intelligence capabilities, quotes from high-level meetings of the National Security Council, and notes about Petraeus’s discussions with President Obama.” (emphasis added)

Here’s what the Fox News story on Hillary Clinton said:

“‘To date, I have received two sworn declarations from one [intelligence community] element.  These declarations cover several dozen emails containing classified information determined by the IC element to be at the confidential, secret, and top secret/sap levels,’ said the I[nspector] G[eneral] letter to lawmakers with oversight of the intelligence community and State Department.  ‘According to the declarant, these documents contain information derived from classified IC element sources.’

Intelligence from a ‘special access program,’ or SAP, is even more sensitive than that designated as ‘top secret’ ….  Access to a SAP is restricted to those with a ‘need-to-know’ because exposure of the intelligence would likely reveal the source, putting a method of intelligence collection – or a human asset – at risk.” (emphasis added)

In other words, the most important and most sensitive information in the notebooks that General Petraeus let his biographer/mistress see were also present on Hillary Clinton’s personal email server.  It has been pretty well established that former Secretary Clinton’s email server did not meet government security standards.  If General Petraeus got in trouble, and had to plead guilty to a misdemeanor and could face demotion, because he gave personal notebooks containing this information to his mistress for a few days, what do we say about former Secretary Clinton’s allowing such information to reside on an insecure personal email server, where it was susceptible to hacking by foreign governments – or anybody else who is good at computers – for how knows how long?

I talked about this issue in March of last year, when General Petraeus’s plea agreement first came out.  At that point, it was more a matter of “interesting questions” about Secretary Clinton’s email server.  We didn’t know then that there were emails on her personal server containing the most secret information or that her server was not properly protected.

Now we do, and while Secretary Clinton keeps trying to say that there nothing on her server that was marked “classified” or “secret,” that is a red herring.  The information in General Petraeus’s notebooks doesn’t appear to have been marked “classified,” but he knew it was classified.  That is why he pled guilty.

The same is true with Secretary Clinton.  If something is secret, it is secret whether it is marked secret or not.  That especially applies to SAP information.  This is obviously secret, whether it is marked that way or not.  Secretary Clinton knows it.  Her claim that nothing was marked classified is just typical Clintonian slickery.  If it used to be “Slick Willy,” it’s now “Slippery Hillary.”

Hillary Clinton and David Petraeus did much the same thing.  General Petraeus was convicted of a misdemeanor and faces possible demotion.  What is going to happen to Hillary Clinton?