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Secrecy and Security News

Newer News: September 2015

August 2015

• Fact Checker: Clinton's claims about receiving or sending 'classified material' on her private e-mail system, by Glenn Kessler, Washington Post, August 27. "At The Fact Checker, we judge statements through the perspective of an ordinary citizen. The classification rules are complex but, legal technicalities aside, the question is whether classified information was exchanged over her private e-mail system. According to the State Department redactions of the released e-mails, the answer is yes."
• Bush War In Iraq 2003 Legal Memo Released: President Not Required To Disclose WMD Information To Congress by Clark Mindock, International Business Times, August 26. "A recently released Justice Department opinion that is more than a decade old outlines the legal argument for situations where the president is exempt from explicit statutory requirements to keep Congress 'fully and currently informed' about foreign weapons of mass destruction."
• State Department officials routinely sent secrets over email by Ken Dilanian, Associated Press, August 26. "The transmission of now-classified information across Hillary Rodham Clinton's private email is consistent with a State Department culture in which diplomats routinely sent secret material on unsecured email during the past two administrations, according to documents reviewed by The Associated Press."
• Advocates call for public access to Congress's research arm by Mario Trujillo, The Hill, August 24. "Forty groups sent a letter to key members of Congress on Monday calling on them to give the public access to reports from the Congressional Research Service (CRS), a major research arm for staffers on Capitol Hill."
• Should Clinton Emails Have Been Classified From the Start? by Patrick Caldwell, Mother Jones, August 21. "Reuters reported that many of her State Department emails should have been deemed automatically classified from the start. But the reality of the rules, like so many of the details in the growing email scandal, isn't entirely clear cut."
• Could Hillary Clinton Face Criminal Charges Over Emailgate? by Margaret Hartmann, New York Magazine, August 21. "Since the news that she used a private email server as secretary of state broke in March, Hillary Clinton has repeatedly insisted that everything she did was 'legally permitted'."
• Fellow diplomats question Clinton's email defense by Bryan Bender, Politico, August 20. "While sympathetic to the messy nature of the classification system, fellow diplomats and specialists say Clinton could have bore responsibility to flag sensitive material."
• The Other 'Top Secret' Problem Hurting Hillary Clinton by Ben Geman, National Journal, August 19. "Long before Clinton made the decision to operate a private email server during her tenure at the top of the State Department, intelligence agencies had been guilty of "overclassification": excessive secrecy that saturates decisions about what's classified and tips the balance toward keeping way too many documents off-limits."
• New Pentagon rules may change war reporting by Rob Lever, AFP, August 14. "New guidelines in a US military war manual may change the rules for reporters covering conflicts, but it remains to be seen how the Pentagon will implement the new policy."
• Email troubles persisting, Clinton camp reassures backers by Ken Thomas and Lisa Lerer, Associated Press, August 12. "She agreed to turn over her private server to the Justice Department this week on the same day Congress got word that at least two emails that traversed the device while she was secretary of state contained information that warranted one of the government's highest levels of classification."
• Clinton emails reveal murky world of 'top secret' documents by Cory Bennett, The Hill, August 12. "What makes an email classified? It's the question at the center of a heated back-and-forth over a government report that determined Hillary Clinton's private email server contained numerous emails now classified 'top secret'."
• Feds Spend $15B to Keep Secrets As Clinton Email Scandal Deepens by John Knefel, Vocativ, August 12. "The federal government spent almost $15 billion last year protecting classified information, the largest amount ever spent in one year to keep secrets safe, despite an overall decline in newly created classified documents."
• Why Stevie Wonder is 'welcome to apply' to the CIA by Tara McKelvey, BBC News, August 11. "The CIA is recruiting people with disabilities in order to build a diverse agency -- and the agency's officials are being unusually open about these efforts."
• The Top Secret Pentagon Project That Had Its Own Super Bowl Commercial by Lauren Thomas, Bloomberg, August 11. "The U.S. Air Force's newest bomber is poised to emerge from the shadows of the Pentagon's so-called black budget."
• Hillary Clinton Emails Take Long Path to Controversy by Scott Shane and Michael S. Schmidt, New York Times, August 8. "The email account and its confusing reverberations have become a significant early chapter in the 2016 presidential race and a new stroke in the portrait of the Democrats' leading candidate."
• White House criticized for not filling watchdog post at CIA by Michael Isikoff, Yahoo News, August 5. "More than six months after the CIA inspector general resigned, President Obama has yet to nominate a replacement, prompting mounting concerns on Capitol Hill that the delay may be affecting sensitive internal investigations."
• Calls mount for Hillary Clinton criminal investigation amid email data breach fears by Guy Taylor, Washington Times, August 2. "It is entirely possible for the State Department and the intelligence community to differ about the classification status of a particular item of information."

Older News: July 2015

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Updated September 1, 2015