IG REPORT - Investigating the FBI

"Political bias did not affect Clinton probe, watchdog report finds" PBS NewsHour 6/14/2018

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  The much-anticipated report on the probe of Hillary Clinton's email practices was released Thursday.  It runs hundreds of pages, finds fault with the FBI, and may be fodder for Republicans and Democrats alike.  While the watchdog found that political bias did not influence the probe, the report found that former Director James Comey had been “insubordinate.”  Lisa Desjardins joins Judy Woodruff.

"How will the FBI adjust after the Clinton email probe report?" PBS NewsHour 6/14/2018

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Thursday’s report from the Justice Department's internal watchdog goes into detail about how the department and the F.B.I. handled the Hillary Clinton email investigation.  What does it mean for the bureau’s reputation and what changes might occur in the aftermath?  Judy Woodruff gets analysis from former Justice Department officials John Carlin and Thomas Dupree.

SUPREME COURT - Microsoft Emails

"Can the U.S. force Microsoft to give up emails stored abroad?  Supreme Court weighs privacy vs. security" PBS NewsHour 2/27/2018

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  A case involving Microsoft and overseas data puts a familiar tech issue before the Supreme Court, the balancing act between the interests of law enforcement and personal privacy.  Marcia Coyle of The National Law Journal joins Judy Woodruff to break down that case, as well as the justices’ ruling on the detainment of undocumented immigrants.

OPINION - Shields and Brooks 9/2/2016

"Shields and Brooks on immigration and whether Clinton should lay low" PBS NewsHour 9/2/2016

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  This week, Donald Trump took a surprise trip to Mexico before his landmark immigration speech.  But are his views too radical for the electorate?  Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton is hitting a fundraising stride, though her email scandal remains in the headlines.  Hari Sreenivasan speaks with syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks for analysis of the week in politics.

REPUBLICAN TABLOID - Clinton Emails, Again and Again, Forever

"We now know what Clinton told the FBI — but should we?" PBS NewsHour 9/2/2016

COMMENT:  In my 22yr carrier in the U.S. Navy (now retired), I was cleared for Secret, and trained on classifications.  In the military, it is somewhat easier to decide.  BUT note, the person responsible for actually assigning the ORIGINAL classification to ANY COMMUNICATION (voice, document, email, etc) is the ORIGINATOR of the communication.  There is no magic filter-in-the-sky to place classifications.

There are rules for classifying material, but they are very big, complex, and can change from day-to-day.  What is classified Secret today MAY NOT have been classified yesterday.

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  On Friday, the FBI released two key documents from its investigation into the private email server Hillary Clinton used as secretary of state.  One file contains the FBI's notes from its interviews with Clinton; the other summarizes the agency's findings.  Hari Sreenivasan speaks with NPR's Carrie Johnson about what new information these materials reveal and why their publication is controversial.

HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour):  Today, the FBI released two key documents about its investigation into the private email server Hillary Clinton used when she was secretary of state.

One contains the agency's notes from Clinton's FBI interview, and the other is a 47-page summary of the FBI's findings.

NPR's Carrie Johnson is covering the story and joins me now.

So, what's new about the documents that were released today?

CARRIE JOHNSON, NPR:  There are several new details, including really a sense of what Hillary Clinton told FBI investigators in that three-and-a-half-hour interview at FBI headquarters on July 2.

Hari, she said she used this personal server as a matter of convenience.  She never had a concern that she or anybody close to her was mishandling classified information, and that she actually doesn't recall attending a security briefing or any kind of training about open records lawsuits or open records laws, which is interesting, because these materials only came out after a host of FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests from news organizations and calls from Republicans in Congress.

HARI SREENIVASAN:  And there was — one of the emails — or at least one of the quotes that we have is about a drone program.  I think we can put that up.

It says, “Clinton stated” — this is the FBI saying:  “Clinton stated deliberation over a future drone strike didn't give her cause for concern regarding classification.”

Is this willful oversight, ignorance?  Was she too busy?  What were the reasons that they gave?

CARRIE JOHNSON:  Recall, Hari, that the FBI director, James Comey, has said that Hillary Clinton and closest aides were extremely careless with government secrets, but he didn't find enough evidence to prosecute anyone for wrongdoing.

That said, these new documents today include more information about what was going through her own email server, a lot of documents, a lot of emails about the drone program, one of the government's most secret tools in the national security space, to allow officials at the CIA and the Pentagon to engage in extrajudicial killing of terrorists or would-be terrorists overseas.

And what Hillary Clinton was asked about by the FBI were a number of emails about targeted killings about to happen, disputes between different government agencies about who should be targeted for those kinds of drone strikes and other things.

What Hillary Clinton said in response to FBI questions was mainly, listen, I relied on career State Department officials to make determinations about what should be classified and what shouldn't.

She also said that these programs were the subject of multiple debates in media, in newspapers, on television and the like.  And, often, her aides were passing around articles from newspapers about drone strikes.  So, she thought it was OK to write about that.

OPINION - Shields and Gerson 5/22/2015

"Shields and Gerson on GOP’s Patriot Act rift, Islamic State’s victories" PBS NewsHour 5/22/2015

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson join Judy Woodruff to discuss the week’s news, new doubts about the Obama administration’s strategy for fighting the Islamic State, the political divide on key provisions of the Patriot Act, and the State Department’s release of emails by former Secretary Hillary Clinton emails.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  .....we turn now to the analysis of Shields and Gerson.  That’s syndicated columnist Mark Shields and Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson.  David Brooks is away.

Welcome to you both.

So, with that conversation coming from the Republican contenders, Mark, this is in a week where ISIS, Islamic State, is making some big gains.  They took over a key city in Iraq, Ramadi.  You’re starting to hear criticism of the administration policy toward ISIS, towards what’s going on in Iraq.

The President came out this week and said, I have got a strategy, it’s working.

What do you think?

MARK SHIELDS, syndicated columnist:  I think, Judy, that, politically, just speaking politically right now, for 10 years, from 2006 basically up to today, nine years, that Iraq has been a positive issue for Democrats.  They won the Congress in 2006.  They nominated the one candidate in the party who had opposed the Iraq war.  And opposition to that Iraq War and to President Bush’s policy became central in the 2008 campaign.

Mitt Romney had to walk away from his support for it in 2012 and say he wouldn’t have supported it.  And now, 2015, five years after President Obama announced the withdrawal of combat units from Iraq, keeping a promise that he had made in that 2008 campaign, we see Ramadi fall.  We see the Iraqi army in full flight, after all the training, after all the billions of dollars.

And the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, said they were not driven, the Iraqi army was not driven out of Ramadi.  They drove out of Ramadi.  They aren’t a paper tiger.  They’re a paper tabby cat.

And that is the reality.  And ISIS is on the move.  ISIS is on the offensive.  And I think, politically speaking, beyond the ethics and the morals, that Democrats now are starting to feel themselves on the defensive on this issue, and Republicans are starting to feel free of what had been an enormous burden.

HILLARY CLINTON - Private Emails

"Private Emails Reveal Ex-Clinton Aide’s Secret Spy Network" by Jeff Gerth (ProPublica) and Sam Biddle (Gawker), ProPublica 3/27/2015

The whole issue of Hillary's emails is a made-up Chicken Little event by Republicans.  Also, what is wrong with a Secretary of State getting intelligence directly from an insider?

Emails disclosed by a hacker show a close family friend was funneling intelligence about the crisis in Libya directly to the Secretary of State’s private account starting before the Benghazi attack.

Starting weeks before Islamic militants attacked the U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya, longtime Clinton family confidante Sidney Blumenthal supplied intelligence to then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gathered by a secret network that included a former CIA clandestine service officer, according to hacked emails from Blumenthal’s account.

The emails, which were posted on the internet in 2013, also show that Blumenthal and another close Clinton associate discussed contracting with a retired Army special operations commander to put operatives on the ground near the Libya-Tunisia border while Libya’s civil war raged in 2011.

Blumenthal’s emails to Clinton, which were directed to her private email account, include at least a dozen detailed reports on events on the deteriorating political and security climate in Libya as well as events in other nations.  They came to light after a hacker broke into Blumenthal’s account and have taken on new significance in light of the disclosure that she conducted State Department and personal business exclusively over an email server that she controlled and kept secret from State Department officials and which only recently was discovered by congressional investigators.

The contents of that account are now being sought by a congressional inquiry into the Benghazi attacks.  Clinton has handed over more than 30,000 pages of her emails to the State Department, after unilaterally deciding which ones involved government business; the State Department has so far handed almost 900 pages of those over to the committee.  A Clinton spokesman told Gawker and ProPublica (which are collaborating on this story) that she has turned over all the emails Blumenthal sent to Clinton.

The dispatches from Blumenthal to Clinton’s private email address were posted online after Blumenthal’s account was hacked in 2013 by Romanian hacker Marcel-Lehel Lazar, who went by the name Guccifer.  Lazar also broke into accounts belonging to George W. Bush’s sister, Colin Powell, and others.  He’s now serving a seven-year sentence in his home country and was charged in a U.S. indictment last year.

The contents of the memos, which have recently become the subject of speculation in the right-wing media, raise new questions about how Clinton used her private email account and whether she tapped into an undisclosed back channel for information on Libya’s crisis and other foreign policy matters.

Blumenthal, a New Yorker staff writer in the 1990s, became a top aide to President Bill Clinton and worked closely with Hillary Clinton during the fallout from the Whitewater investigation into the Clinton family.  She tried to hire him when she joined President Obama’s cabinet in 2009, but White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel reportedly nixed the idea on the grounds Blumenthal was a divisive figure whose attacks on Obama during the Democratic primary had poisoned his relationship with the new administration.

It’s unclear who tasked Blumenthal, known for his fierce loyalty to the Clintons, with preparing detailed intelligence briefs.  It’s also not known who was paying him, or where the operation got its money.  The memos were marked “confidential” and relied in many cases on “sensitive” sources in the Libyan opposition and Western intelligence and security services.  Other reports focused on Egypt, Germany, and Turkey.

Indeed, though they were sent under Blumenthal’s name, the reports appear to have been gathered and prepared by Tyler Drumheller, a former chief of the CIA’s clandestine service in Europe who left the agency in 2005.  Since then, he has established a consulting firm called Tyler Drumheller, LLC.  He has also been affiliated with a firm called DMC Worldwide, which he co-founded with Washington, D.C., attorney Danny Murray and former general counsel to the U.S. Capitol Police John Caulfield.  DMC Worldwide’s now-defunct website describes it at as offering “innovative security and intelligence solutions to global risks in a changing world.”

In one exchange in March 2013, Blumenthal emailed Drumheller, “Thanks.  Can you send Libya report.”  Drumheller replied, “Here it is, pls do not share it with Cody.  I don’t want moin speculating on sources.  It is on the Maghreb and Libya.”  Cody is Cody Shearer, a longtime Clinton family operative—his brother was an ambassador under Bill Clinton and his now-deceased sister was married to Clinton State Department official Strobe Talbott — who was in close contact with Blumenthal.  While it’s not entirely clear from the documents, “Moin” may refer to the nickname of Mohamed Mansour El Kikhia, a member of the Kikhia family, a prominent Libyan clan with ties to the Libyan National Transition Council.  (An email address in Blumenthal’s address book, which was also leaked, was associated with his Facebook page.)

There’s no indication in Blumenthal’s emails whether Clinton read or replied to them before she left State on February 1, 2013, but he was clearly part of a select group with knowledge of the private clintonemail.com address, which was unknown to the public until Gawker published it this year.  They do suggest that she interacted with Blumenthal using the account after she stepped down.  “H: got your message a few days ago,” reads the subject line of one email from Blumenthal to Clinton on February 8, 2013; “H: fyi, will continue to send relevant intel,” reads another.

The memos cover a wide array of subjects in extreme detail, from German Prime Minister Angela Merkel’s conversations with her finance minister about French president Francois Hollande – marked “THIS INFORMATION COMES FROM AN EXTREMELY SENSITIVE SOURCE”—to the composition of the newly elected South Korean president’s transition team.  At least 10 of the memos deal in whole or in part with internal Libyan politics and the government’s fight against militants, including the status of the Libyan oil industry and the prospects for Western companies to participate.

One memo was sent on August 23, 2012, less than three weeks before Islamic militants stormed the diplomatic outpost in Benghazi.  It cites “an extremely sensitive source” who highlighted a string of bombings and kidnappings of foreign diplomats and aid workers in Tripoli, Benghazi and Misrata, suggesting they were the work of people loyal to late Libyan Prime Minister Muammar Gaddafi.

While the memo doesn’t rise to the level of a warning about the safety of U.S. diplomats, it portrays a deteriorating security climate.  Clinton noted a few days after the Benghazi attack, which left four dead and 10 people injured, that U.S. intelligence officials didn’t have advance knowledge of the threat.

On September 12, 2012, the day after the Benghazi attack, Blumenthal sent a memo that cited a “sensitive source” saying that the interim Libyan president, Mohammed Yussef el Magariaf, was told by a senior security officer that the assault was inspired by an anti-Muslim video made in the U.S., as well as by allegations from Magariaf’s political opponents that he had CIA ties.

Blumenthal followed up the next day with an email titled “Re: More Magariaf private reax.”  It said Libyan security officials believed an Islamist radical group called the Ansa al Sharia brigade had prepared the attack a month in advance and “took advantage of the cover” provided by the demonstrations against the video.

An October 25, 2012 memo says that Magariaf and the Libyan army chief of staff agree that the “situation in the country is becoming increasingly dangerous and unmanageable” and “far worse” than Western leaders realize.

Blumenthal’s email warnings, of course, followed a year of Libyan hawkishness on the part of Clinton.  In February of 2011, she told the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva that "it is time for Gaddafi to go.”  The next month, after having described Russian reluctance over military intervention as “despicable,” Clinton met with rebel leaders in Paris and drummed up support for a no-fly zone while in Cairo.  On March 17, 2011, the UN Security Council voted to back Libyan rebels against Gaddafi.

It’s this buildup, which Clinton still proudly recalled in her 2014 memoir, that Blumenthal appears to join in on 2011.  In addition to the intel memos, his emails also disclose that he and his associates worked to help the Libyan opposition, and even plotted to insert operatives on the ground using a private contractor.

A May 14, 2011 email exchange between Blumenthal and Shearer shows that they were negotiating with Drumheller to contract with someone referred to as “Grange” and “the general” to place send four operatives on a week-long mission to Tunis, Tunisia, and “to the border and back.”  Tunisia borders Libya and Algeria.

“Sid, you are doing great work on this,” Drumheller wrote to Blumenthal.  “It is going to be around $60,000, covering r/t business class airfare to Tunis, travel in country to the border and back, and other expenses for 7–10 days for 4 guys.”

After Blumenthal forwarded that note to Shearer, he wrote back questioning the cost of the operation.  “Sid, do you think the general has to send four guys.  He told us three guys yesterday, a translator and two other guys.  I understand the difficulty of the mission and realize that K will be repaid but I am going to need an itemized budget for these guys.”

“The general” and “Grange” appear to refer to David L. Grange, a major general in the Army who ran a secret Pentagon special operations unit before retiring in 1999.  Grange subsequently founded Osprey Global Solutions, a consulting firm and government contractor that offers logistics, intelligence, security training, armament sales, and other services.  The Osprey Foundation, which is a nonprofit arm of Osprey Global Solutions, is listed as one of the State Department’s “global partners” in a 2014 report from the Office of Global Partnerships.’

Among the documents in the cache released by Lazar is an August 24, 2011, memorandum of understanding between Osprey Global Solutions and the Libyan National Transition Council—the entity that took control in the wake of Qadaffi’s execution—agreeing that Osprey will contract with the NTC to “assist in the resumption of access to its assets and operations in country” and train Libyan forces in intelligence, weaponry, and “rule-of-land warfare.”  The document refers to meetings held in Amman, Jordan between representatives of Osprey and a Mohammad Kikhia, who represented the National Transition Council.

Five months later, according to a document in the leak, Grange wrote on Osprey Global letterhead to Assistant Secretary of State Andrew Shapiro, introducing Osprey as a contractor eager to provide humanitarian and other assistance in Libya.  “We are keen to support the people of Libya under the sponsorship of the Ministry of Finance and the Libyan Stock Exchange,” Grange wrote. Shapiro is a longtime Clinton loyalist; he served on her Senate staff as foreign policy adviser.

Another document in the cache, titled “Letter_for_Moin,” is an appeal from Drumheller to then-Libyan Prime Minister Ali Zeidan offering the services of Tyler Drumheller LLC, “to develop a program that will provide discreet confidential information allowing the appropriate entities in Libya to address any regional and international challenges.”

The “K” who was, according to Shearer’s email, to be “repaid” for his role in the Tunisia operation appears to be someone named Khalifa al Sherif, who sent Blumenthal several emails containing up-to-the-minute information on the civil war in Libya, and appears to have been cited as a source in several of the reports.

Contacted by ProPublica and Gawker, Drumheller’s attorney and business partner Danny Murray confirmed that Drumheller “worked” with Blumenthal and was aware of the hacked emails, but declined to comment further.

Shearer said only that "the FBI is involved and told me not to talk.  There is a massive investigation of the hack and all the resulting information.”  The FBI declined to comment.

Blumenthal, Grange, and Kikhia all did not respond to repeated attempts to reach them.  Nick Merrill, a spokesman for Clinton had no comment on Blumenthal’s activities with Drumheller.

Whatever Blumenthal, Shearer, Drumheller, and Grange were up to in 2011, 2012, and 2013 on Clinton’s behalf, it appears that she could have used the help:  According to State Department personnel directories, in 2011 and 2012—the height of the Libya crisis—State didn’t have a Libyan desk officer, and the entire Near Eastern Magreb Bureau, which covers Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco and Libya, had just two staffers.  Today, State has three Libyan desk officers and 11 people in the Near Eastern Magreb Bureau.  A State Department official wouldn't say how many officers were on the desk in 2011, but said there was always "at least one" officer and "sometimes many more, working on Libya."

Reached for comment, a State Department public affairs official who would only speak on background declined to address questions about Blumenthal’s relationship to Clinton, whether she was aware of the intelligence network, and who if anyone was paying Blumenthal.  Asked about the Tunisia-Libya mission, the official replied, “There was a trip with the secretary in October of 2011, but there was also a congressional delegation in April, 2011.  There were media reports about both of these at the time."  Neither trip involved traveling via Tunis.

OPINION - Shields and Gerson 3/13/2015

"Shields and Gerson on Clinton’s email problem, Senate sabotage of Iran negotiations" PBS NewsHour 3/13/2015

Excerpts

SUMMARY:  Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson join Judy Woodruff to discuss the week’s news, including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s response to concerns about her use of email, the letter sent by Republican senators to Iran’s leadership, and the fallout from a video capturing a racist chant at the University of Oklahoma.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  Let’s talk about Hillary Clinton’s…Let’s talk about Hillary Clinton’s e-mails.

Mark, did she answer all the questions out there with her news conference this week?

MARK SHIELDS, Syndicated columnist:  No, of course not, Judy.

The questions will keep coming and keep coming.  But there was one result of it that just hit me so hard.  And that is the great advice, beware of any national leader — and I don’t limit this to Secretary Clinton, by any means — but who doesn’t have close to him or her contemporary friends and confidants who can tell them when necessary they’re absolutely wrong and go to hell.

And very few Presidents — Jerry Ford did, to his everlasting credit.  He was an enormously emotionally secure man.  Ronald Reagan chose Jim Baker to be his chief of staff, who had run two campaigns against him, as examples of that sort of emotional security and stability.

I just ask Mrs. Clinton, who in your retinue, among your group of advisers, when you had the idea of having a personal computer e-mail service of your own, an individual one, who didn’t say, are you out of your “expletive deleted” mind?   This is politically indefensible and probably morally indefensible and may be legally problematic.

And I guess that is what really bothers me.  And I think that’s a question that persists even after all the details, whether the relevance or irrelevance of the e-mails turns out to be anything at all legally or substantively.  That is a real problem.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  What about the questions?  Did she answer any of the questions?

MICHAEL GERSON, Washington Post:  Well, I think the proper word for the press conference, it was really brazen.  It was bold.  She went out there.  She had total control over her e-mails in a private server while she was serving in government.

She decided — she and her people decided what should be revealed and what should be eliminated.
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MARK SHIELDS:  Well, I think this is a question that is going to nag at Democrats.  Is this going to be — we’re seeing it right at the outset, that relations with the press are frosty, to the point of arctic, and that there is a sense, not simply from this, but that we’re going back into let’s go to the barricades.  It’s let’s circle the wagons.

There’s a certain mentality that way.  We’re not going to take anything.  And I think in a nation that is as polarized politically as we are, as acrimonious as it has become, I think this is really not the atmosphere that you want to create.  She is not the only person who has an e-mail problem, by any means.  Every candidate on the Republican side has an e-mail.

And they have made unilateral — Governor Bush made unilateral decisions on what was personal.  Governor Walker has persistent problems.  But I’m just talking about the approach.

And Michael’s seat 22 years ago sat David Gergen, who went over to the White House having worked for President Reagan, Bush and Ford to work for President Clinton. Whitewater was then the big thing.
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JUDY WOODRUFF:  Let’s talk about another — another story that was very much out there this week, the letter, Mark, 47 Republican senators sending a letter to the leadership in Iran saying, be careful, don’t sign a nuclear deal with the United States.

Was this — were they well-advised to sign this, to do this?

MARK SHIELDS:  A respected national columnist with impeccable conservative credentials wrote of this letter, “In timing, tone and substance, it raises questions about Republicans’ capacity to govern.”

And just by accident, Michael happens to be here, the author of those words.

(LAUGHTER)

MARK SHIELDS:  I think he said it very well.

This, Judy, was more than a faux pas or a slip-up.  I think it is a reflection of Mitch McConnell in a really negative way, that his leadership is defective.  The fact that he didn’t even consult with the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee of his own party, who opposed this and was trying to put together a bipartisan coalition of Democrats who had doubts and skepticism about the Iranian deal, that he just steamrolled it ahead and made it a matter of party loyalty and party unity, and essentially put us in a position where we’re at odds with our European allies, who are now doubting the United States and whether, in fact, we’re substantive, I mean, it just — whether we’re — we can be relied upon in this.

And to sabotage bipartisanship, it was done, effectively, in the Senate, and to sabotage the hopes of any kind of a deal to limit the nuclear building of the Iranians.
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On Iran nuclear deal

MARK SHIELDS:  Judy, just one point.  There are seven nations involved here.  I mean, this isn’t just the — Barack Obama and the Republican Senate Caucus.  This is France and Great Britain and Germany and China and Russia and the United States and Iran trying to come to a deal.

That is a remarkable achievement, if you can pull it off, with those seven countries all agreeing on inspections and a timetable.  That’s important.

POLITICS - eMail Security MuckReads

Purely Republican partisan politics.

"Hillary Clinton’s Top Five Clashes Over Secrecy" by Jeff Gerth, ProPublica 3/13/2015

The latest flap over her private emails as secretary of state is far from the first time she’s been accused of lacking transparency.

Back in April of 2007, when she was campaigning for the Democratic Presidential nomination for the first time, then-Senator Hillary Clinton lashed out at the secrecy of the George W. Bush administration.

She told a New Hampshire audience that if elected she would implement a "plan to enhance accountability and transparency" and "to replace secrecy and mystery with openness."  One part of her plan:  "It's time our government went fully online as well."

She lost her White House bid.  But 20 months later, before Barack Obama took that job and she became secretary of state, she set up a private computer server registered to her home in Chappaqua, N.Y., to handle all her official, as well as private, emails for the next four years.  Her decision — a secret until earlier this month — impeded efforts by the press and others to review State Department actions.

Today it is Hillary Clinton's record of transparency that has come under fire.  At a press conference Tuesday, she acknowledged that in retrospect "it would've been better for me to use two separate phones and two email accounts."  She has asked the State Department to release her official emails, a process that could take months.

Few public figures have been as scrutinized as Hillary Clinton.  Sometimes her disclosures go beyond what is required, but she's also racked up a reputation for secrecy that at times has returned to haunt her.

Here are five examples covering the last two decades.  Some are drawn from a 2007 book I did, with Don Van Natta Jr., entitled "Her Way:  The Hopes and Ambitions of Hillary Rodham Clinton."  (Little Brown & Co.)  Clinton's office didn't respond to a request for comment.

1) 1992:  The Commodity Trades

During Bill Clinton's first run for the White House, his campaign declined to release all of the couple's tax returns.  Later it emerged that the campaign had weighed requests from the press and decided not to do so, because a few of the returns showed Hillary Clinton's spectacular success in commodities trading, in which she made almost $100,000 from an initial investment of $1,000 in a matter of months for a return of almost 10,000 percent.  Hillary Clinton threatened a campaign lawyer who had access to the material with retribution if she released the data:  "You'll never work in Democratic politics again," the lawyer, Loretta Lynch, says Clinton told her.  It wasn't until 1994, as the New York Times prepared to publish an article detailing the trades, that the Clintons made public the returns.

2) 1993:  The Health Care Task Force

As First Lady, Clinton led a Presidential task force to overhaul the U.S. health care system.  The group, which produced a 1,342-page bill that failed to win approval, came under intense criticism from lawmakers and interest groups for meeting behind closed doors.  Several court challenges were brought in an attempt to open the process. Ultimately the courts provided a partial legal victory to the administration.  Clinton later wrote she didn't mind the criticism since she was "trying to do something important for people" but acknowledged the failure was partially the result of her "own missteps" in "trying to do too much, too fast."

3) 1994:  Records from the Rose Law Firm

U.S. investigators in 1994 subpoenaed the First Lady's billing records from her years at the Rose Firm in Little Rock, Arkansas, documents that had been also sought by reporters.  A focus of their interest was her legal work for a failing savings and loan, but records of those billings weren't found.  Much later, Clinton's long-time assistant, Carolyn Huber, said she found in the White House residence an additional box of records that contained the billing memos.  They were turned over to the independent counsel in 1996.  Clinton testified she had no knowledge of how the records wound up where they did.

4) 2006:  The Energy Task Force

Late in her first term as U.S. senator from New York, Clinton set up an energy task force to help her work through the issue, deliver a major speech on the subject and prepare for a possible Presidential run, participants in the task force told us for the book.  They produced a 40-page report in April 2006.  The whole project, including the existence of the group, its members and its work product was a secret, designed, participants said, to encourage frank discussions of the issue.  The leader of the task force headed an investment firm with major holdings in the energy sector.  Senators routinely get input from outsiders and no law requires their disclosure, but a secret task force is unusual.

5) 2015:  The Family Foundation

The Clinton family foundation, now called the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, made disclosures that exceed the legal requirements.  Charities are not required to list donors, but as part of Clinton's selection as Secretary of State the foundation agreed to disclose the identity of contributors and restrict solicitations from foreign governments.  Still, the information on the foundation's website is less than full.  Donors are identified but not the exact amount of each donation or the date of those contributions.  Instead donations fall under ranges and are listed cumulatively.  The foundation did not announce that it started raising money from foreign governments after Hillary Clinton left office.  But last month the Wall Street Journal pieced together some new foreign donations after the foundation's web site was updated.  That article was the first in a spate of news accounts raising questions about foreign money coming into the Clinton network as she prepares a run for President.  The foundation has said donors are carefully vetted and their money goes to important charitable projects.

"Email Escapades MuckReads Edition:  Hillary is Just the Latest Politician to Avoid Official Email" by Leticia Miranda, ProPublica 3/13/2015

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been on the defensive ever since the New York Times first reported that she used a private email account for government business.  In light of the imbroglio, we decided to look at the email escapades of other politicos for this week's MuckReads:

Colin Powell relied on personal emails while secretary of state, Politico, March 2015

Since news of Clinton's use of private email for White House business broke, an aide to Colin Powell says he "might have occasionally used personal email addresses" to correspond with staff and officials during his tenure as Secretary of State.

Bush Advisers' Approach on E-Mail Draws Fire, The New York Times, April 2007

The Bush Administration admits that as many as 22 political advisers to the president, including Karl Rove, used their Republican National Committee email accounts for White House related business.  At the time, the RNC automatically purged emails after 30 days.  Later, a White House spokesperson reported that as many as 5 million emails could have been lost from the White House's official server.

Jeb Bush Owned Personal Email Server He Used as Governor, NBC News, March 2015

A Mar. 4, 2015 report from NBC News finds that between 1999 until early 2007 Jeb Bush used his own private email server for official business as Florida Governor.

Two ex-Walker aides charged with illegal campaigning, The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, January 2012

Two former aides to Gov. Scott Walker, while he was Executive of Milwaukee County, used a private Internet network to conduct campaign work.  They are later charged with illegally campaigning on government time.

Trove of Palin E-Mails Draws Press to Alaska, The New York Times, June 2011

In 2011, Sarah Palin releases more than 24,000 pages of emails sent from a private account while she was Alaska governor, responding to public records requests made in 2008.  The emails reveal less-than scandalous details of her life including her early attempts to meet John McCain, a draft ghostwritten letter-to-the-editor in response to criticism against her and plans to see a controversial Christian pastor in Juno, Alaska.

U.S. Ambassador to Kenya J. Scott Gration resigns over 'differences' with Washington, The Washington Post, June 2012

Scott Gration, US Ambassador to Kenya, resigns in Jun. 2012 just before the publication of an Office of Inspector General report that found he had "repeatedly violated diplomatic security protocols at the embassy" by using a private email account for official business, according to the Washington Post.

Christie administration may have violated public records law, The Record, January 2014

The Record releases a cache of emails sent from personal accounts between top Chris Christie aides that reveals their plan to create a traffic jam over the George Washington Bridge possibly as retribution against the mayor of Fort Lee who refused to endorse Christie in the 2013 New Jersey gubernatorial election.

After Pledge of Sunlight, Gov. Cuomo Officials Keep Their Email in the Shadows, ProPublica, May 2014

ProPublica finds that top advisers to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo conduct government business through personal email accounts including Howard Glaser.  ProPublica recently obtained emails from Glaser in which he touted his " significant, critical, and current input" on a deal that weakened rules to prevent misdeeds in the mortgage market.

NEW YORK - Automatically Deleting State Employee Emails

I retired from my last workplace as an IT Technician and have a comment that is not addressed in this article.

Microsoft's Office 365 email system is an online system that keeps eMails on Microsoft computers, not your companies, and by default includes user archives (saved eMails).  This means there is an extra security consideration when you have company data on someone else's system.  Also, Microsoft can charge by amount of storage used depending on the agreement, the 50gb is just a maximum limit.

I'm no lawyer, but on the policy of allowing employees to determine which eMails are legal 'records' (not to be deleted) is opening the New York and the employee to lawsuits.

"Why is the Cuomo Administration Automatically Deleting State Employees’ Emails?" by Theodoric Meyer, ProPublica 8/11/2014

Excerpt

New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s administration — which the governor pledged would be the most transparent in state history — has quietly adopted policies that allow it to purge the emails of tens of thousands of state employees, cutting off a key avenue for understanding and investigating state government.

Last year, the state started deleting any emails more than 90 days old that users hadn't specifically saved — a much more aggressive stance than many other states.  The policy shift was first reported by the Albany Times Union.

A previously unpublished memo outlining the policy raises new questions about the state's stated rationale for its deletions policy.  What's more, the rules on which emails must be retained are bewilderingly complex – they fill 118 pages – leading to further concern that emails may not be saved at all.

"If you're aggressively destroying your email, it looks like you're trying to hide something," said Benjamin Wright, a Dallas lawyer who has advised companies and government agencies on records retention.

ProPublica obtained the memo through a public records request.

In the June 18, 2013, memo, Karen Geduldig, the general counsel of the state's Office of Information Technology Services, described New York's decision to automatically delete emails as a way to cut down on the state's "enormous amount of email data."

But the state implemented the policy as part of a move to Microsoft's Office 365 email system, which offers 50 gigabytes of space per email user — enough to store hundreds of thousands or even millions of emails for each state worker.  The state's version of Office 365 also offers unlimited email archiving.

The Office of Information and Technology Services declined to comment on the record.  An official in the office said even though the state can store large quantities of email, it can still be difficult to manage.

"Just because you have a big house doesn't mean you have to shove stuff in it," the official said.

Geduldig's memo also pointed out that some federal government agencies and corporations automatically purge employees' email.  "Such a system will aid the State in improving its email management," Geduldig wrote.

But many states take a different tack.

Florida, for instance, requires state employees to keep routine administrative correspondence for at least three years, and emails dealing with policy development for at least five years.  Connecticut requires employees to keep routine emails for at least two years.  Washington State requires workers to keep emails dealing with public business for two years, and emails to and from top officials for four years.  Those states also do not automatically delete email.

"It shouldn't be an automatic process," said Russell Wood, the records manager for the Washington State Archives.  "There should be some point of review in there."

Emails that qualify as "records" are supposed to be preserved under New York's policy.  But determining which emails qualify and which don't — a task left up to individual state employees — can be mind-numbingly complicated.

NSA - Internet Surveillance Program

"NSA Ability to Intercept Domestic Communication Raises More Privacy Questions" PBS Newshour 8/21/2013

Excerpt

MARGARET WARNER (Newshour):  The nation's top intelligence official today declassified documents showing that, for three years, the National Security Agency, or NSA, collected more than 50,000 e-mails a year between Americans with no connection to terrorism.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in 2011 ruled the collection methods unconstitutional.  And today's documents show changes the NSA made so that the program, designed to target foreign intelligence, could continue.

The release came hours after The Wall Street Journal reported the NSA has built a surveillance network covering roughly 75 percent of all U.S. Internet traffic, including e-mails, Web searches and Internet phone calls of Americans.

And we're joined now by Siobhan Gorman, intelligence correspondent for The Wall Street Journal.

CYBERWAR - Google Warning to GMail Users

"Google to warn users targeted by state-sponsored attacks" by Josh Rogin, Foreign Policy 6/5/2012

UPDATE: A senior Senate aide confirmed that this evening he received a warning on his Gmail account that Google suspected he had been the target of a state-sponsored cyber attack.

Web giant Google is about to announce a new warning informing Gmail users when a specific type of attacker is trying to hijack their accounts -- governments and their proxies.

Later today, the company will announce a new warning system that will alert Gmail users when Google believes their accounts are being targeted by state-sponsored attacks. The new system isn't a response to a specific event or directed at any one country, but is part and parcel of Google's recent set of policy changes meant to allow users to protect themselves from malicious activity brought on by state actors. It also has the effect of making it more difficult for authoritarian regimes to target political and social activists by hacking their private communications.

"We are constantly on the lookout for malicious activity on our systems, in particular attempts by third parties to log into users' accounts unauthorized. When we have specific intelligence-either directly from users or from our own monitoring efforts-we show clear warning signs and put in place extra roadblocks to thwart these bad actors," reads a note to users by Eric Grosse, Google's vice president for security engineering, to be posted later today on Google's Online Security blog, obtained in advance by The Cable. "Today, we're taking that a step further for a subset of our users, who we believe may be the target of state-sponsored attacks."

When Google's internal systems monitoring suspicious internet activity, such as suspicious log-in attempts, conclude that such activities include the involvement of states or state-backed initiatives, the user will now receive the specialized, more prominent warning pictured above. The warning doesn't necessarily mean that a user's account has been hijacked, but is meant to alert users that Google believes a state sponsored attack has been attempted so they can increase their security vigilance.

Google wants to be clear they are not singling out any one government for criticism and that the effort is about giving users transparency about what is going on with their accounts, not about highlighting the malicious actions of foreign states.

"If you see this warning it does not necessarily mean that your account has been hijacked. It just means that we believe you may be a target, of phishing or malware for example, and that you should take immediate steps to secure your account," Grosse writes. "You might ask how we know this activity is state-sponsored. We can't go into the details without giving away information that would be helpful to these bad actors, but our detailed analysis-as well as victim reports-strongly suggest the involvement of states or groups that are state-sponsored."

Google insiders told The Cable that Google will not be giving out information on which governments it sees as the most egregious violators of web privacy. For Google, the new initiative is not an effort against governments but a way to help its users help defend and protect themselves.

Users who click through the new warning message will be directed to a page that outlines commonly seen security threats and suggests ways users can immediately raise their level of security on Gmail.

"We're constantly working to prevent harmful activity on our services, especially attempts to compromise our users' information," the insider said. "The primary message is: we believe that you're a target so you should take immediate steps to protect your account."

The new announcement comes only days after the company said they would alert users in mainland China when they use search terms that are likely to be censored by the Chinese government. According to another of Google's official blogs, that move was meant to improve the search experience for Chinese users by allowing them to avoid terms that would result in stalls or breaks in their search experience due to government filters.

For example, Google said that Chinese users searching the character for "river," which is "jiang" in Chinese, causes technical problems. The same character is also used in the search for former Chinese President Jiang Zemin.

Google didn't specifically mention Chinese censorship in its notice about Chinese search terms, apparently in an effort not to antagonize the Chinese government any more than necessary. Google and Beijing have been at odds since 2010, when the company announced it would no longer censor search terms on the Google.cn and moved the bulk of its Chinese operations to Hong Kong.

That move followed a series of Gmail attacks in 2010, directed at Chinese human rights activists, which were widely suspected to be linked to the Chinese government. Following those attacks, the government-controlled People's Daily publicly accused Google of being an agent for U.S. intelligence agencies.

While last week's announcement and this week's announcement are both being presented by Google as user based initiatives not directed at foreign governments, Google CEO Eric Schmidt has been speaking out publicly and forcefully in recent months about the potential negative role governments can play in circumventing internet freedom.

"While threats come from individuals and even groups of people, the biggest problem will be activities stemming from nations that seek to do harm," he said in London last month.