Richard Ben-Veniste

The pseudo-scandal over Hillary Clinton’s emails bubbled up again with the recent release of the State Department Inspector General’s report. Notwithstanding the usual hype, a close reading of the 42-page report (plus timely recommendations and appendices) reveals that the State Department system was susceptible to cyberattacks both before and after Secretary Clinton’s tenure. Some experts have suggested that Clinton’s server was as secure, and maybe even more secure, than the department’s system.

The subject of the investigation was Secretary Clinton’s personal email system, which she elected to utilize rather than the State Department’s existing unclassified system. The State Department system has a decades long history of failures, including successful intrusions by unauthorized personnel. Across our government, foreign hackers have gained access to millions of U.S. private records and pieces of sensitive information in recent years. It is no wonder that Secretary Clinton was not the first to choose to use a personal email account instead of the sub-optimal State Department option.

The report notes that former Secretary of State Colin Powell used a personal email, and staff of both Secretaries Powell and Condoleezza Rice periodically used personal accounts. Tellingly, the report makes no recommendation that Secretary Clinton or any other former Secretaries be investigated or punished.

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Moreover, as a senior State Department official admitted, the department did not do a good job of making sure employees understood or implemented proper regulations. In fact, some of the most useful guidance was not issued until 2013, four years after Clinton became secretary.

What is clear from the IG report is that the department as a whole, and the Office of the Secretary in particular, not only have outstanding flaws related to their servers and cybersecurity, but they also have been slow to make the necessary changes.

The office tasked with ensuring compliance of the rules was underfunded, understaffed and ineffective for several years, beginning long before Clinton assumed her role.

Also clear is that the secretary’s use of her private email account and server was no secret to department officials. To the contrary, there were extensive communications, documented by the IG, between operations officials at State and the technicians in charge of maintaining security on the secretary’s private server. And when there was a perceived threat of a hacker probing her system, the security folks shut it down until the threat was addressed.

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The IG reported that “longstanding, systemic weaknesses related to electronic records and communications have existed within the Office of the Secretary that go well beyond the tenure of any one Secretary of State.” Given that finding, can it be considered anything other than a rational decision by Secretary Clinton to continue the use of a system for unclassified emails that had proved secure and functionally sound during her service as a United States senator, rather than risk using the State Department system?

The popular appetite for branding every controversy or disagreement as a scandal — and accepting the notion of “equivalency” as precept of objective journalism — enables partisan mischief-makers to ply their trade. Those interested in truth and fairness will take the time to examine the facts. Or, as Bernie Sanders succinctly put it eight long months ago, “Enough of the emails!”

Richard Ben-Veniste was a member of the bipartisan 9/11 Commission. The views expressed reflect his personal opinion.

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