CIA’s Bob Baer says Hillary Clinton’s email scandal is ‘deal breaker’
CNN Intelligence and Security Analyst and former CIA agent Bob Baer spoke with CNN International about Hillary Clinton’s email scandal and the mishandling of top secret information. Baer was straightforward, saying it’s a deal breaker and calls into question if “she’s capable of being president.”
Detailing the finding of the Inspector General and nomenclature of the documents, Baer explained:
“You don’t get anymore secret than that. ‘TK’ is talent keyhole, relates to satellite — very classified satellite photography. ‘SI’ is special intelligence, which could relate code breaking, the National Security Agency, even Snowden didn’t get into that. And if this, in fact, was on a private server, you and I’d get fired, and possibly jailed. This could be a felony.”
Baer detailed how the information is kept on separate servers and that an aide to Clinton, assuming she didn’t move the data herself, must have signed off on the forms for access.
“If this was on her server, and it got into her smartphone, there’s a big problem there. Seriously, if I had sent a document like this over the open Internet, I’d get fired the same day, escorted to the door, and gone for good, and probably charged with mishandling classified information.”
Baer was pressed about the size of government, that this could fall through the cracks, but the former CIA agent refuted the proposal.
“No. When I was overseas at various stations, I had encrypted communications, and I wasn’t even allowed to receive documents like this over highly encrypted communications. We were worried about leakage, and the rest of it, storage, leaving it in hard drives. It couldn’t be sent from Washington. This is very, very serious stuff. And, in the discipline of the national security establishment, you never let this stuff out of your hands, and especially on a handheld. And if this in fact, were on her handheld, was sent to her, or she forwarded it [in] any way, I wonder if she’s capable of being president.”
Baer was then asked if he thought this was a “deal-breaker” for Clinton’s candidacy. He answered, “As a national security employee — a former one, yes. I mean this — I can’t tell you how bad this is. … But having documents like this sent across the Internet, it could be hacked very easily, and probably were hacked, is a transgression that I don’t think the president of the United States should be allowed to have committed.”
[…] CIA’s Bob Baer says Hillary Clinton’s email scandal is ‘deal breaker’ […]
Thank you. I enjoyed this article very much. Regardless of one’s political leanings, we are a nation of law and can’t support the nomination of those–like Hillary–who think and act like they’re above the law that applies to the rest of us.