Friday, March 6, 2015

“Camouflage is a game we all like to play, but our secrets are as surely revealed by what we want to seem to be as by what we want to conceal.” – Russell Lynes

Political behavior that purposefully exists outside normal practices begs to be questioned. Those behaviors aren’t always wrong, or malfeasant in some way, but when they stand in contradistinction to normal procedures, one must expect questions to arise in order that these behaviors be better understood, and explained.

It was revealed by the House Committee investigating Benghazi, but then made widely public by The New York Times on Monday, that rather than use a State Department issued email address throughout her four-year tenure as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton exclusively used a private email account.
Even MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski, who is a vocal Democrat, said the following during the March 3rd episode of Morning Joe:

“How does she serve as Secretary of state for all those years, and nobody notices her emails aren’t coming from a government address?…What is going on?…All her emails have to go public…I think it is [shocking]…I mean, it’s ridiculous.”

Now, thanks to Al Jazeera America, it has come out that the servers on which Clinton’s emails are stored are in her own home in Chappaqua, New York. They claim that Clinton’s staff was even warned about the usage of a private account, but the warnings were presumably dismissed.

The Associated Press is now saying that Clinton’s private server gives her unprecedented control over her emails—control that a government official shouldn’t have.

“Since Clinton effectively retained control over emails in her private account even after she resigned in 2013, the government would have to negotiate with Clinton to turn over messages it can’t already retrieve from the inboxes of federal employees she emailed.”

Hillary Clinton has always acted as if she is an open book, absolutely transparent, but scandals like these tell a different tale. Aside from a general “why” being asked by the media, no one seems to be asking the deeper, and more pertinent question: For what specific purpose would Hillary Clinton need a private email on a private server?

As a public official in such a position of power as the Secretary of State, what would drive Hillary Clinton to eschew an official, and secure State Department email account, and rather choose to install her own private server, to which no one else could have access?

Unnecessary privacy, and withholding point to a need to keep something secret. At the very least, Clinton’s installation of a private server in her own home indicates that she knew ahead of time that in the future, secrets might need to be kept.

This presses to the forefront even more questions. What secrets have been kept on those servers, and what secrets did Hillary believe would need protecting in the future? History tells us that secrets–specifically with regard to high-ranking government officials—usually relate to misconduct of some kind.

With the Banghazi scandal hanging around Hillary Clinton’s neck like a noose, this possible malfeasance could very well relate to what occurred on the night of September 11th, 2012 in Libya. Clinton–as well as the entire Obama administration–has been so aggressive in their wagon-circling regarding Benghazi, repeatedly asserting that there was no wrongdoing, or negligent behavior on the part of President Obama, or then-Secretary of State Clinton on the night of September 11th, 2012, and in the days following. This fervent, and often flippant behavior leads me, like a moth to a bug-zapper, straight to the possibility of a cover-up. I’d put good money on incriminating Benghazi-related emails existing in Clinton’s private server.

Even more intriguing, though, is how this will affect the public’s perception of Clinton’s character. Conservatives know she’s a devious creature, but the general public has a favorable view of her. However, a public official who purposefully maintains absurd levels of secrecy, and privacy never looks good.

The media may not be there to protect her this time, as even they seem rattled by this revelation. Being the singularly supported Democratic candidate going into 2016, this may change everything. This may destroy Clinton once and for all–and who will fill that vacuum?

This story is only beginning to unravel, but to quote Jean Racine, “There are no secrets that time does not reveal.”