Colin Powell's Email To Clinton About Personal Devices Shows Routing Around FOIA Is Business As Usual

from the the-public:-worst-thing-to-happen-to-gov't-since-ever dept

Briefly noted in an earlier article about the FBI's investigation into Hillary Clinton's personal email server was the existence of communications that pointed towards FOIA-dodging as a possible factor in her decision to set this up.

Emails released earlier had hinted at this. The FBI's investigation documents contained part of an email from Colin Powell warning her that if it became public Clinton was using a personal BlackBerry, any communications on that device could become subject to FOIA requests. Powell also pointed out that he had routed around this during his years at the State Department by "not saying much" and "not using systems that captured the data."

So, it's not as though government officials need much help from people like Matt Yglesias in keeping more communications related to government work hidden from the public. They've always had plenty of options and appear to be keenly aware of which systems feed into FOIA-able areas.

The full email has now been released (h/t Rebecca Shabad and Steve Ragan) and the contents make it clear Powell had ways of routing around FOIA requirements while heading up the State Department. This appears to be the information Clinton was seeking -- how to avoid having to use the systems the State Department already had or being blocked from using her personal BlackBerry while in office.

Clinton had noticed Powell used a personal BlackBerry and wanted to know what restrictions he ran into and whether he was allowed to use it while "on site" during his tenure as Secretary of State. She added that she was trying to "bring along" the State Department, presumably towards the private email server/personal device future Clinton envisioned.

Powell's response begins with him pointing out he didn't use a Blackberry for stuff he wanted to keep off the FOIA radar. He used his own computer.

I didn't have a BlackBerry. What I did do was have a personal computer that was hooked up to a private phone line (sounds ancient.) So I could communicate with a wide range of friends directly without it going through the State Department servers. I even used it to do business with some foreign leaders and some of the senior folks in the Department on their personal email accounts.

On one hand, Powell wanted to keep some communications (those with "friends") private, which is understandable. On the other, he clearly states he conducted official business with his private device -- including communications with other State Department officials, who were using their own personal email accounts.

It's not just a Powell thing or a Clinton thing. It's a government thing. Many government officials utilize personal devices and accounts. Many of them get away with it. Many government officials say nice things about transparency, too -- all the while creating a stockpile of "public" documents the public never gets a chance to see, much less know exists.

The full statement -- which was partially quoted in the FBI investigation documents -- shows routing around FOIA requirements, record preservation policies, and government accountability ideals comes as naturally to government officials as board of directors' positions at favored corporations following retirement from the public sector. After discussing the issues he had with State Department security, the NSA, CIA, etc. about the supposed threat personal devices posed to government security, Powell notes the real threat is… the public.

However, there is a real danger. If it is public that you have a BlackBerry and it it government and you are using it, government or not, to do business, it may become an official record and subject to the law. Reading about the President's BB rules this morning, it sounds like it won't be as useful as it used to be. Be very careful. I got around it all by not saying much and not using systems that captured the data.

Powell has since defended this email by saying he wasn't attempting to influence her on how to handle potentially FOIA-able communications while running the State Department. Powell backs up this assertion by pointing out Hillary Clinton said his email didn't influence her decision to use private email accounts, private devices, and a private server to handle State Department communications. So, I guess that's all wrapped up and nothing more to see here. [eyeroll]

It's impossible to tell if this conversation was supposed to evade FOIA requirements as well. Powell's email address is redacted, but Clinton's is still exposed. As of the date this was sent (February 2009), Clinton had been a Senator for nearly a decade. The email account used, however, was an AT&T address linked to her personal BlackBerry -- which would suggest personal devices/email accounts had been standard operating procedure for quite some time.

Also of note is this fact -- pointed out by one-man FOIA wrecking crew Jason Leopold: this "new" revelation of Powell's "How To Beat the State Department and the Public at Their Own Transparency Game" advice is actually about three years old. Apparently, Powell detailed his accountability-skirting measures in his 2012 book titled (no shit) "It Worked for Me."

Filed Under: colin powell, email, foia, hillary clinton, security

CIA Torture Report Reveals That State Department Officials Knew About Torture; Were Told Not To Tell Their Bosses

from the loose-lips-stop-war-crimes dept

We continue to wait and wait for the White House to finish pouring black ink all over the Senate's torture report, before releasing the (heavily redacted) 480-page executive summary that the Senate agreed to declassify months ago. However, every few weeks it seems that more details from the report leak out to the press anyway. The latest is that officials at the State Department were well aware of the ongoing CIA torture efforts, but were instructed not to tell their superiors, such that it's likely that the top officials, including Secretary of State Colin Powell, may have been kept in the dark, while others at the State Department knew of the (highly questionable) CIA actions.

A Senate report on the CIA's interrogation and detention practices after the 9/11 attacks concludes that the agency initially kept the secretary of state and some U.S. ambassadors in the dark about harsh techniques and secret prisons, according to a document circulating among White House staff.

The still-classified report also says some ambassadors who were informed about interrogations of al-Qaida detainees at so-called black sites in their countries were instructed not to tell their superiors at the State Department, the document says.

Powell was eventually told about the program, but not until it was well underway apparently. And, of course, the CIA says that this was all perfectly normal:

The former CIA official said it would be standard practice for ambassadors informed about a covert operation to be instructed not to share it with others who did not have a "need to know," as determined by the National Security Agency. Ambassadors in countries in which the CIA set up black sites to interrogate prisoners were usually told about it, said the official....

The other interesting tidbit is that this report came from leaked "talking points" at the State Department, as they prepare for the release of the report. As we noted recently, the State Department had been making some noises about how angry this report would make lots of people -- but it appears that the latest strategy is for the State Department to "embrace" the findings and pull a "that was then, this is now" card:

The State Department wants to embrace the conclusions of the Senate report and blast the CIA's past practices, according to the document.

"This report tells a story of which no American is proud," the document says in a section entitled "Topline Messages (as proposed by State)."

"But it is also part of another story of which we can be proud," the document adds. "America's democratic system worked just as it was designed to work in bringing an end to actions inconsistent with our democratic values."

Frankly, this is probably the most sensible strategy -- and one many people have been advocating for. Everyone knows the report is damning. The best way to deal with it is to come clean, admit how wrong things were, and be much more transparent. There are, of course, a few problems with this plan, though. First, the US has never done anything to actually punish those who were responsible for the program. In fact, the only person in jail for his association with the program is the guy who blew the whistle on it. Second, the intelligence community would have to become a hell of a lot more transparent. While it has actually become marginally more transparent thanks to Ed Snowden, the intelligence community has a long way to go to build back up trust. Releasing this report is the right thing to do. But actually getting people to trust the US intelligence community again is going to take a lot more work.

Filed Under: ambassadors, cia, colin powell, state department, torture, torture report

Guy Accused Of Leaking President Bush's Paintings Indicted For Hacking In The US

from the extradition-coming dept

An online hacker who went by the name "Guccifer" got a lot of attention a year and a half ago or so for regularly hacking into the email and social media accounts of various political officials and insiders along with some Hollywood folks, with the most high profile being former President George W. Bush's email, leading to the leaking of some of Bush's early attempts at painting. But that was hardly all. Among others, he hacked into email and/or social media accounts of Senator Lisa Murkowski, Colin Powell, top Hillary Clinton advisor Sidney Blumenthal, venture capitalist John Doerr, former White House chief of staff Kenneth Duberstein, actor Jeffrey Tambor (Jeffrey Tambor?!?!), Sex and the City author Candace Bushnell, Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein, President Obama's head of the National Intelligence Council Christopher Kojm and the head of the National Nuclear Security Administration Neile Miller. In other words, Guccifer was pretty busy.

Then, earlier this year he was arrested in Romania. It turned out that he was Marcel Lazar Lehel, a Romanian cabdriver. Thing is, he didn't just hack the famous and powerful in the US -- but in Romania as well. Just last week, he was sentenced to four years in jail in Romania, with the possibility of more for earlier hacks. And, just like that, the FBI has announced an indictment against him as well, meaning that the US will likely to get him extradited (and, yes, the US has an extradition treaty with Romania).

While the indictment does not name the people who were hacked, calling them Victim 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5, it's not difficult to figure out that Victim 1 is President Bush's sister Dorothy Bush, which is how he got the GWB paintings (GWB had sent photos of them to his sister) and Victim 3 is Colin Powell, who had to deny an affair with a foreign diplomat after some of his emails were leaked. The indictment appears to suggest a particular infatuation with Powell, as it also included hacks of his Facebook page and posting anti-Bush rants on Powell's Facebook page.

I'm always a little nervous about computer hacking cases, because the government is fairly well known for exaggerating non-hacking situations and pretending that they're hacking under the CFAA, but assuming that this guy really did get into all of these accounts, it seems like what the CFAA was more written to cover in the first place.

The full indictment is below, but what I'm trying to figure out is how "victim 2" got included in the list. Notice if you can spot which one of the following "is different from the others" in the list below:

• Victim 1... was a family member of two former U.S. presidents who was the true owner of an AOL account....
• Victim 2... was a sanitation engineer who was the true owner of an AOL account....
• Victim 3... was a former U.S. Cabinet member who resided in the Eastern District of Virginia. Victim 3 was the true owner of an AOL account with subaccounts and a Facebook account....
• Victim 4... was a former member of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff who was the true owner of a Facebook account....
• Victim 5, known to the grand jury, was a journalist and former presidential advisor who was the true owner of an AOL account with subaccounts....

It just seems that if you were to put the five of those together at a Washington DC cocktail party, one of them would stick out as somewhat different from the others.

Filed Under: cfaa, colin powell, doj, email, fbi, george w. bush, guccifer, hacking, marcel lazar lehel