I think pretty much everyone agrees that Hillary's statement sounds like a bald-faced lie.
However, not only does it sound like a lie, I don't think it is even possible
I mean, like, literally, I do not think it is possible for the Secretary of State to NEVER send emails that are not classified.
First, what is the Secretary of State?
The Secretary of State is a senior official of the federal government of the United States of America heading the U.S. Department of State, principally concerned with foreign affairs and is considered to be the U.S. government's equivalent of a Minister for Foreign Affairs.
The Secretary of State, appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate, is a member of the President's Cabinet, the National Security Council, and is the highest-ranking appointed executive branch official both in the presidential line of succession and the order of precedence.Additionally:
The specific duties of the Secretary of State include:
Organizes and supervises the entire United States Department of State and the United States Foreign Service.
Advises the President on matters relating to U.S. foreign policy, including the appointment of diplomatic representatives to other nations, and on the acceptance or dismissal of representatives from other nations.
Participates in high-level negotiations with other countries, either bilaterally or as part of an international conference or organization, or appoints representatives to do so. This includes the negotiation of international treaties and other agreements.
Responsible for overall direction, coordination, and supervision of interdepartmental activities of the U.S. Government overseas.
Providing information and services to U.S. citizens living or traveling abroad, including providing credentials in the form of passports and visas.
Supervises the United States immigration policy abroad. Communicates issues relating the United States foreign policy to Congress and to U.S. citizens.Sorry to be pedantic here. I'm sure we all know this, but here's something we might never think about, unless we were working at such a level ourselves:
The reason information is classified is, almost always, because we want to hide it from our enemies. For the most part our enemies are overseas.
This means the Secretary of State's playing field is literally among our enemies. Sure we put on a show of getting along with them. The Secretary of State is the Executive over all diplomatic relations, so her job is to put a polite face on difficult discussions of International Policy.
But in order to do that, the Secretary of State needs to know what the President's goals are, and how to achieve them while not giving away too much information, or any other valuable asset.
In the planning stages, such strategic planning/thinking has to be done through the application of Game Theory and inventive Dialectic. It must be creative and unburdened by concern for leaks of information. Such thinking requires a wide latitude for what might, in other circumstances, be considered mispeaks or mistakes.
The job of the Secretary of State is quite literally to trade in obfuscation in the pursuit of negotiating for the achievement of the interests of the United States abroad.
Hiding information is the essence of negotiation.
The process of choosing what to hide and what to reveal requires Classified discussion.
As such, it would seem only reasonable that every single communication from the Secretary of State to anyone in a high position within the Administration, or over seas, whether that person would be a diplomat, or a foreign Head of State, would necessarily be considered CLASSIFIED, until it was deemed to be not classified.
The process of De-Classifying such communications would require a thoughtful assessment of the information in the email by a person who had a keen understanding of all the factors at play. In some cases, there may be dozens of factors, or even hundreds. Therefore, the process of De-Classifying, or redacting a document takes a lot of time.
It is not possible to be strategic and creative at the same time as one is busy redacting/censoring themselves.
The only exception to this might be notes of Congratulations of Sympathy, which might be expressed via email, and simultaneously released to the Press.
The Secretary must communicate with the President. The President's emails, if they are at all spontaneous, likewise, could not be considered anything other Classified, until they were De-Classified.
Tell me. Am I off here? Is it possible that the whole batch of email communications from the Secretary of State could, even possibly, be considered Unclassified, even as they are being sent out?
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Another thought: So, let's assume it's true Hilary never sent a single email containing Classified Information. Well, ok. BUT DID ANYONE EVER SEND HILARY ANY CLASSIFIED INFORMATION?
If so, then that is on her server.
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UPDATED ---
Before Hillary Clinton’s news conference yesterday, Jen Psaki, the spokesperson for the United States Department of State, stated that the White House could not immediately release the former Secretary of State’s emails because “it will take several months” to redact all the classified things she sent.
Despite this, Ms. Clinton then stated in her press conference, “I did not email any classified material to anyone on my email. I’m certainly well aware of the classification requirements and did not send classified material.”
