Not Really Top Secret Top Secret

Posted on April 10, 2016 by Scott Johnson

President Obama was in rare form with Chris Wallace in the interview recorded at the University of Chicago for FOX News Sunday this morning. FOX News has posted the transcript here.    As for the classified information that Hillary Clinton stored on the insecure private server used for her official business as Secretary of State, Obama assured Americans:

She would never intentionally put America in any kind of jeopardy. And what I also know, because I handle a lot of classified information, is that there are - there's classified, and then there's classified. There's stuff that is really top secret top secret, and there's stuff that is being presented to the president or the secretary of state, that you might not want on the transom, or going out over the wire, but is basically stuff that you could get in open source.    Now this is almost unbelievable from a variety of perspectives, but we have grown accustomed to Obama's transgressions against propriety and taste as well as the legal order.     Today President Obama gives us a new top secret security classification for the benefit of Hillary Clinton: Not really top secret top secret.

Loose translation: forget about it. The fix is in....... To Read More

My Take - Actually he's right about that - some things are classified "Top Secret" and you have to wonder why?  But that's not the determining factor for how that information is handled.  Once material become classified information - it's classified information - and the law requires it be handled in a certain way.  It's not up to the handlers of that information to determine the value of the classification.  There are lower levels of classification such as "Confidential", "Secret" along with Top Secret" but so what?  If someone lower in the ranks working with classified information did this they would be prosecuted. 

The President of the United States is briefed not only on the information - he's given a broad perspective as to how that information is collected, and correspondingly - how foreign powers collect classified information in the same manner.  For him to say Hillary never put America in any kind of jeopardy is a lie.  He had to know she was easily capable of being hacked by foreign powers by her deliberate actions.  He had to know that's what spies do.  If there's a weakness in the protection of classified material - they will find it and exploit it.  The Russians, the Chinese and the Israelis were all certainly capable of hacking her computer and reading everything there.  Let's not kid ourselves - we have to believe someone did.  To think otherwise counter to what's going on in reality - and that gave someone an edge over Obama and his team.