How secret is it?

The new report by Catherine Herridge on Hillary Clinton’s homebrew email server sounds like the set-up to a joke. As to the emails housed on Clinton’s server: how secret were they? They were so secret “that senior lawmakers who oversee the State Department cannot read them without fulfilling additional security requirements[.]”

This is a variation of the joke in Ken Dilanian’s NBC News report on the Intelligence Community Inspector General’s letter to Senators Burr and Corker. Dilanian reported: “An intelligence official familiar with the matter told NBC News that the special access program in question was so sensitive that McCullough and some of his aides had to receive clearance to be read in on it before viewing the sworn declaration about the Clinton emails.”

The emails in question were so secret that they contained classified information beyond top secret.

Herridge’s report also quotes Clinton’s comment to NPR on the Intelligence Community IG’s letter conveying the assessment of the relevant agency: “This seems to me to be, you know, another effort to inject this into the campaign, it’s another leak. I’m just going to leave it up to the professionals at the Justice Department because nothing that this says changes the fact that I never sent or received material marked classified.”

Putting the question of the veracity of her comment to one side, this seems to me a variation of the old Freddie Prinze joke. When it comes to handling classified information with the appropriate care regardless of markings, Clinton’s response is: “It’s not my job.”

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