U.S. State Dept official 'pressured' FBI to declassify Clinton email -FBI documents

source - Reuters

A senior State Department official sought to shield Hillary Clinton last year by pressuring the FBI to drop its insistence that an email on the private server she used while secretary of state contained classified information, according to records of interviews with FBI officials released on Monday.

The accusation against Patrick Kennedy, the State Department's most senior manager, appears in the latest release of interview summaries from the Federal Bureau of Investigation's year-long investigation into Clinton's sending and receiving classified government secrets via her unauthorized server.

The Reuters article appears to be the first MSM article on this subject apart from FoxNews.

What follows here is my commentary rather than a summary of the Reuters article: There are many calls for Patrick Kennedy's resignation, firing, or suspension pending Congressional investigations. The calls are coming from members of the Green Party, the Libertarian Party, and the Republican Party. To date I can find no calls for any action to be taken against Patrick Kennedy from the Democratic Party.

The general Democratic Party and Clinton campaign response is that Kennedy's requests did not accomplish anything, so there is no problem. Many have pointed out that merely to make such an offer is a crime in the United States of America. The FBI agents involved insist that it was a clear quid pro quo offer and was termed that way by Kennedy. Congressional hearings are pending.

The following video includes Catherine Herridge's report on this subject broadcast on FoxNews on "Special Report with Bret Baier".

I have posted both the Reuters article and the FoxNews broadcast to this thread in order to more completely cover the topic. There is information in the FoxNews broadcast by Catherine Herridge (which some may see as spin) that is not in the Reuters article, and the Reuters article contains perspectives (some might say spin) that is not expressed in the same terms in Herridge's report on FoxNews.

I expect that everyone who supports Hillary Clinton will see this as her campaign and the Obama administration see this. And all those who oppose Hillary Clinton will see it as those who believe Kennedy engaged in a criminal act.

Patrick Kennedy a real winner.

Look at this irony....

Patrick Joseph Kennedy II (born July 14, 1967) is an American politician and mental health advocate.

Patrick Kennedy

There is also a Wall Street Journal article that discusses this matter and provides additional information and responses: WSJ link.

The FBI official told investigators that “State has an agenda which involves minimizing the classified nature of the Clinton emails in order to protect State interests and those of Clinton.”

a reply to: Kapriti

This fascination with the emails is getting ridiculous. Lets insert some actual reality into the discussion.

Emails? I suspected the worst—until I read the FBI report!

“She did not break the law,” said FBI Director Comey....The State Department email system is an unclassified system just like Clinton’s server was.

What the heck?! Was the whole State Department mishandling classified information?

Yes, yes they were. If anyone here had actually read the actual FBI report they would have found out the simple truth:

The main intelligence agencies — the CIA, NSA, NGA, DOD, State, and FBI — committed the same security violation as Clinton: putting classified information on unclassified systems. But much worse, they knew they were doing this, so they covered their tracks by not labeling their Top Secret emails as Top Secret. That’s what fooled Clinton.

Also, classifying documents is not a science and there is often disagreement between those with authority to classify (which included Clinton). Many that the FBI now says are Classified, where not considered classified by the intel agent who sent them or by Clinton.

Here’s an example of Clinton receiving classified information from Dennis Ross, a foreign service professional who served under Carter, Clinton, H. W. Bush, and Obama:

Ross emailed Clinton in 2012. Now the State Dept says it was Secret back in 2012.
Clinton replied: “Thanks, Dennis. Can you talk this morning?”
Ross replied: “Yes, I am available any time. I am at home now.”
Clinton replied: “Does EB know what you are doing w I’m?”
Ross replied: “No.”

Note that all of the Secret info came from Ross, not Clinton. But because Clinton replied, and the original was automatically included, she is charged with “sending” Secret information. This email chain counts as five Secret emails.

There are four reasons Clinton would not guess Ross sent Secret information. (1) Ross was just a professor at the time. (2) He had been handling classified info for 45 years. (3) He sent the info over an unclassified system. (4) He did not mark it as classified. If there was any fault here, it clearly lies more with Ross.

So here how it worked: (I refer you to the linked article above for graphic picture of this process) CIA sends classified info from their UNclassified server to State Department UNclassified server. State Department forwards it to Clinton's UNclassified server. At this point Clinton hasn't done anything wrong. How did the classified document get from the CIA's secure system to their unsecure system? It had to be physically typed in because the secure systems ARE NOT CONNECTED to the unsecure systems. And Clinton didn't have ANYTHING to do with it, but since she replied, the attachment was carried with the reply and viola! she is sucked into sending classified stuff she didn't even know was classified.

I encourage you to read and digest the review at the link at the top of the page.

There are those of you who I am sure cannot bear to acknowledge that Secretary Clinton is anything but an honest, capable administrator doing a good job in a hard job. But try to comprehend the extreme non-event of the process.

To charge Clinton for anything greater than a routine mistake is to imagine that you can:

• Never mind that the State Department lost 251,287 emails in 2010; lets fret over the 210 emails that Clinton didn't lose.
  
• Forget that secure servers DO NOT connect to unsecure servers.
  
• Intelligence agents sent secrets from UNCLASSIFIED servers to Clinton
  
• All those agents broke the same rules as Clinton: they put secrets on unclassified servers
  
• Those agents did not label them as secret (that would admit that they broke the rule!)
  
• They knew what they were doing when they put the secrets on unclassified servers (Clinton didn't).
  

This information is all buried in the FBI report - WHY ISN'T IT BEING REPORTED?

I guess it just isn't sexy enough for the scandal sheets that need to invoke outrage in order to anyone to pay them any attention. A bit like the Donald perhaps.

Another link which approaches the issue from a similar angle but describes the motivation for classifying the information AFTER it has already been spread across the unclassified server network: New York Times: Use of Unclassified Email Systems Not Limited to Clinton