Hillary Clinton likely to be cleared of wrongdoing in passing classified information via her personal server while Secretary of State?
If that happens, it insults every veteran and service member of the military branches ever tasked as custodian of their unit’s classified material and being responsible for its security and leaves the level of the intelligence of the investigators, who would render such a conclusion, as questionable.
I was custodian of all classified material held by the Commander of Task Force 77 during my in-country Vietnam assignment to his staff in 1970 and 1971. If I had knowingly transmitted the tiniest snippet of a document, bearing even the lowest classified designator, by whatever means and which could be intercepted or hacked by any unauthorized parties, be they military, civil service, family, friend or foe, and was found to have done so, I would have immediately been court-martialed and escorted to Fort Leavenworth.
As Secretary, Clinton was captain of the State Department’s ship. When a vessel of the Navy runs aground, whether due to an error in judgment by the navigator’s computation of bearings or the helmsman’s momentarily failing to turn the rudder as directed, it is the captain, not they, who gets the boot and loses eligibility to seek or hold such a position of responsibility again.
Clinton warrants equal reprimand — a boot from seeking and eligibility to hold an elected or appointed political office, and likewise, to those in the federal government who would let her off.
John R. Davis, South Paris
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