By Ray Starmann

The average American is consumed from sunup to sundown with one thing; staying above water in this disastrous economy. Most Americans have never served in the military or in the US Intelligence community and have no understanding, nor interest in the ongoing scandal involving Hillary Clinton’s abuse of power and violations of national security laws while serving as Secretary of State.

In a nutshell, this is what she’s done:

While serving as Secretary of State from 2009 to 2013, Mrs. Clinton conducted State Department business by sending and receiving thousands of classified emails on a private server, stored in the bathroom of a hipster company in Boulder, Colorado.

The server was not secure, meaning it could not scramble or encrypt classified information and the people who ran the company had no security clearances to handle classified information. Those are both violations of national security laws.

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There are several types of classified information. The lowest level of classified material is designated Confidential; then there’s Secret and then Top Secret. Any of these three levels of classified information might also have caveats, such as NOFORN (No Foreign Dissemination).

The highest levels of classified information are known colloquially as Above Top Secret, but are really SCI (Sensitive Compartmented Information) and SAP (Special Access Program) information.

All military intelligence personnel have Top Secret SCI access to information. So, do many people in the civilian intelligence agencies. Some have both Top Secret SCI and SAP access. People only are given access to information that they need to know, which protects them and the nation’s security.

Mrs. Clinton, as Secretary of State, had one of the highest clearances in the country and certainly had access to Top Secret SCI and SAP information.

Top Secret SCI information usually pertains to Imagery Intelligence programs and methods, such as certain types of satellites and their capabilities. Top Secret SCI also includes Signals Intelligence information, such as programs and methods to collect electronic information, aka, eavesdropping on phone calls. One of the most famous SIGINT programs in history was the Allies cracking of the German Enigma Machine code, which enabled us to know every move the Nazis were making. The small amount of people who knew about Enigma were told that if they ever revealed the Enigma secret to unauthorized personnel, they would be shot.

The release of SCI information to unauthorized personnel could cause grave damage to US national security.

Top Secret SAP information usually pertains to Human Intelligence of HUMINT, aka old-fashioned espionage involving US operations, methods and sources in foreign countries, aka an Iranian general who is spying for the US.

Like SCI, SAP information also has code names and its release could cause grave damage to US national security and put the lives of our foreign sources in mortal danger.

As Secretary of State, Mrs. Clinton dealt with classified information every day, some of it SCI and SAP. Yet, she claims that she never sent or received any information marked classified at the time she had her hands on it. How would she do business as America’s chief diplomat without ever sending or receiving classified information? What she was probably doing was telling her staff to delete the classification levels from the top and bottom of each email and page and then send them to her. To remove the classification levels from documents is a felony.

The other part of her argument that is ludicrous is her consistent statement that she never handled information on her non-secure server that was classified at the time. She knows that to have done so, is a felony. Classified information is not an egg. It doesn’t incubate then hatch and then suddenly become classified one day. It’s either classified from day one or it isn’t.

There is no doubt that the Russians and the Chinese and the Iranians and the North Koreans and ISIS have all or some of the many thousands of classified emails that passed through Mrs. Clinton’s server in the bathroom closet. As I type this article, hostile nations have intelligence information about some of the most integral methods, programs and sources utilized by the US Intelligence community. The bad guys know a lot more about our satellites, our SIGINT capabilities, our ELINT programs, our HUMINT sources and the various odds and ends of diplomatic speak that give the opposition a picture of how we think and operate across the world, all courtesy of Hillary Clinton.

The FBI has 147 agents working on this case because they know the seriousness of this absolute national security breach and debacle.

Yet, Mrs. Clinton struts around as if nothing has happened, as if she’s done nothing wrong, as if thousands of unmarked classified documents and emails never passed through her hands. We’re all supposed to just forget about it and put the nation in her capable hands on Election Day. All of the emails were just about yoga, and Chelsea’s wedding and emails from Bill, who never emails.

Hillary Clinton is completely incompetent, a crook, a liar or all three.

Hillary Clinton is a national security nightmare.

Hillary Clinton has put us all in danger.

Does she understand that? Does she even care?