{"id":12209,"date":"2018-06-15T13:33:03","date_gmt":"2018-06-15T17:33:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=12209"},"modified":"2023-06-14T22:10:52","modified_gmt":"2023-06-15T02:10:52","slug":"usa-today-inspector-general-report-shows-secrecy-threatens-democracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2018\/06\/15\/usa-today-inspector-general-report-shows-secrecy-threatens-democracy\/","title":{"rendered":"USA Today: Inspector General Report Shows Secrecy Threatens Democracy"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\"\"<\/a>USA TODAY, June 15, 2018<\/h1>\n

Inspector general’s report on FBI and Clinton’s emails shows secrecy threatens democracy<\/a><\/h1>\n<\/section>\n
\n
James Bovard, Opinion columnist<\/span><\/div>\n<\/section>\n
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The 500-page inspector general’s report released Thursday reveals how unjustified secrecy and poor decisions helped ravage the credibility of both Hillary Clinton\u2019s presidential campaign and the FBI.<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Yesterday\u2019s Inspector General report on the FBI\u2019s investigation of Hillary Clinton contained plenty of bombshells, including a promise by lead FBI investigator Peter Strzok that \u201cWe\u2019ll stop<\/a>\u201d Donald Trump from becoming president.\u00a0The report reveals how unjustified secrecy and squirrelly decisions helped ravage the credibility of both Hillary Clinton\u2019s presidential campaign and the FBI.\u00a0But few commentators are recognizing the vast peril to democracy posed by the sweeping prerogatives of federal agencies.<\/p>\n

The FBI\u2019s investigation of Clinton was spurred by her decision to set up a private server to handle her email during her four years as secretary of state. The server in her Chappaqua, N.Y.\u00a0mansion<\/a> was insecure and exposed emails with classified information to detection by foreign sources and others.<\/p>\n

Clinton effectively exempted herself from the federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The State Department ignored 17 FOIA requests<\/a> for her emails prior to 2014 and insisted it required 75 years to disclose emails<\/a> of Clinton’s top aides. A federal judge\u00a0and the State Department inspector general slammed the FOIA stonewalling<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Clinton\u2019s private email server was not publicly disclosed until she received a congressional subpoena in 2015.\u00a0A few months later, the FBI Counterintelligence Division opened a criminal investigation of the \u201cpotential unauthorized storage<\/a> of classified information on an unauthorized system.\u201d<\/p>\n

The IG report gives the impression that the FBI treated Hillary Clinton and her coterie like royalty \u2014 or at least like personages worthy of\u00a0endless deference.\u00a0When Bleachbit software<\/a> or hammers were used to destroy email evidence under congressional subpoena, the FBI treated it as a harmless error. The IG report<\/a> \u201cquestioned whether the use of a subpoena or search warrant might have encouraged Clinton, her lawyers … or others to search harder for the missing devices [containing email], or ensured that they were being honest that they could not find them.\u201d Instead, FBI agents worked on \u201crapport building\u201d with Clinton aides.<\/p>\n

Indictment justified<\/h3>\n

FBI investigators shrugged off brazen deceit.\u00a0An unnamed FBI agent on the case responded to a fellow FBI agent\u00a0<\/a>who asked how an interview went with a witness who worked with the Clintons at their Chappaqua residence: \u201cAwesome. Lied his a__\u00a0off. Went from never inside the scif [sensitive compartmented information facility] at res [residence], to looked in when it was being constructed, to removed the trash twice, to troubleshot the secure fax with HRC a couple times, to everytime there was a secure fax i did it with HRC. Ridic.\u201d\u00a0When his colleague replied that\u00a0\u201cwould be funny if he was the only guy charged n this deal,\u201d he replied, \u201caint noone gonna do s___\u201d as far as filing charges.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the most frequent phrase in the IG report is \u201cAccording to the FD-302 …\u201d\u00a0 This refers to the memo an FBI agent writes after interviewing targets or witnesses in an investigation. Relying on Form 302s (instead of recordings interviews) maximizes the discretion of FBI officials<\/a>, allowing them to frame issues or create a narrative or buttress charges of lying to a federal agent<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The FBI waited until the end of the investigation to interview Clinton and had decided to absolve her \u201cabsent a confession from Clinton,\u201d the IG report noted. There was no recording and no transcript; instead, a 302 report allowed FBI Director James Comey to proceed with the preordained \u201cnot guilty\u201d finding. Clinton had received numerous classified emails (some of which were marked with a (C)) on her private email server. The IG report notes, \u201cAccording to the FD-302 from Clinton\u2019s interview, Clinton told the FBI that she did not know what the \u2018(C)\u2019 meant and \u2018speculated it was a\u00a0reference to paragraphs ranked in alphabetical order.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The IG noted, \u201cWitnesses told us, and contemporaneous emails show, that the FBI and Department officials who attended Clinton\u2019s interview found that her claim that she did not understand the significance of the \u2018(C)\u2019 marking strained credulity. [FBI] Agent 1 stated, \u2018I filed that in the bucket of hard to impossible to believe.\u2019\u201d Comey told IG investigators that \u201cby her demeanor, she was credible and open and all that kind of stuff.\u201d\u00a0But a video recording of the showdown (especially the alphabet line) would have been invaluable to Americans who doubted Clinton and the FBI.<\/p>\n

Anti-Trump texts spurred the IG to refer 5 FBI employees to the FBI for possible disciplinary penalties.\u00a0One FBI agent labeled Trump supporters as \u201cretarded\u201d and declared \u201cI\u2019m with her\u201d [Hillary Clinton].\u00a0Another FBI employee texted that \u201cTrump\u2019s supporters are all poor to middle class, uneducated, lazy POS.\u201d One FBI lawyer texted that he was \u201cdevastated\u201d by Trump\u2019s election and declared \u201cViva la Resistance!\u201d and \u201cI never really liked the Republic anyway.\u201d The same person became the \u201cprimary FBI attorney assigned to [Russian election interference] investigation beginning in early 2017,\u201d the IG noted.<\/p>\n

Lack of transparency<\/h3>\n

The IG report deals briefly with a kerfuffle over the FOIA release of Clinton Foundation documents a week before the 2016 election.\u00a0Regrettably, the IG overlooked FBI\u2019s horrendous record on FOIA compliance, spurring bitter complaints<\/a> even from its former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.\u00a0A federal judge slammed the agency<\/a> for claiming it would require 17 years to fulfill a FOIA request on surveillance of antiwar activists in the 1960s. The FBI\u00a0also makes ludicrous redactions to FOIA releases \u2014 such as deleting the names of Clark Kent and Lois Lane from a theatrical adaptation of Superman because disclosing them would \u201cconstitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

The IG report illustrates the vast sway that federal agencies sometimes seek over what Americans are permitted to know about candidates and their government. Unfortunately, this coroner\u2019s inquest into 2016 chicaneries will do nothing to prevent covert federal meddling from tilting future elections.<\/strong>\u00a0And as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wisely warned in 2012 that \u201clack of transparency<\/a> eats away like a cancer at the trust people should have in their government.\u201d<\/p>\n

James Bovard,\u00a0author of\u00a0<\/em>Attention Deficit Democracy<\/a>,\u00a0is\u00a0a member of USA TODAY\u2019s\u00a0Board of Contributors. Follow him on Twitter: @JimBovard<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

USA TODAY, June 15, 2018 Inspector general’s report on FBI and Clinton’s emails shows secrecy threatens democracy James Bovard, Opinion columnist The 500-page inspector general’s report released Thursday reveals how unjustified secrecy and poor decisions helped ravage the credibility of both Hillary Clinton\u2019s presidential campaign and the FBI. Yesterday\u2019s Inspector General report on the FBI\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10770,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1545,47,815,931,339,1073,1450,925,1546],"class_list":["post-12209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-andrew-mccabe","tag-fbi","tag-foia","tag-freedom-of-information-act","tag-hillary-clinton","tag-james-comey","tag-peter-strzok","tag-state-department","tag-superman"],"yoast_head":"\nUSA Today: Inspector General Report Shows Secrecy Threatens Democracy - James Bovard<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2018\/06\/15\/usa-today-inspector-general-report-shows-secrecy-threatens-democracy\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"USA Today: Inspector General Report Shows Secrecy Threatens Democracy - James Bovard\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"USA TODAY, June 15, 2018 Inspector general’s report on FBI and Clinton’s emails shows secrecy threatens democracy James Bovard, Opinion columnist The 500-page inspector general’s report released Thursday reveals how unjustified secrecy and poor decisions helped ravage the credibility of both Hillary Clinton\u2019s presidential campaign and the FBI. 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The Wall Street Journal called Bovard \"the roving inspector general of the modern state\" and Washington Post columnist George Will called him a \"one-man truth squad.\" His 1994 book, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, received the Free Press Association\u2019s Mencken Award as Book of the Year. His Terrorism & Tyranny won the Lysander Spooner \"Best Book on Liberty in 2003\" award. He received the Thomas Szasz Award for Civil Liberties work, awarded by the Center for Independent Thought and the Freedom Fund Award from the Firearms Civil Rights Defense Fund of the National Rifle Association. Bovard\u2019s writings have been publicly denounced by FBI director Louis Freeh, the Secretary of Agriculture, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, the Postmaster General, and the chiefs of the U.S. International Trade Commission, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, as well as by many congressmen and other malcontents.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.jimbovard.com","https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/jim.bovard","https:\/\/x.com\/jimbovard"],"url":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/author\/admin\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12209"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12209\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18406,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12209\/revisions\/18406"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}