{"id":8284,"date":"2015-03-12T07:53:11","date_gmt":"2015-03-12T14:53:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=8284"},"modified":"2015-03-12T07:53:11","modified_gmt":"2015-03-12T14:53:11","slug":"why-the-e-gate-epidemic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/why-the-e-gate-epidemic\/","title":{"rendered":"Why the E-Gate Epidemic?"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Petraeus to Hillary, public servants have been trying to manipulate the historical record in their favor.<\/em><\/h3>\n
by Victor Davis Hanson\u00a0\/\/ National Review Online<\/a><\/div>\n
\n
\"Photo
Photo via Shutterstock<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

F<\/span>ormer CIA director David Petraeus plea-bargained to a misdemeanor count of unauthorized removal and retention of classified material after having given classified government information to his one-time mistress, Paula Broadwell. How was Petraeus\u2019s transgression uncovered? By exposure of a non-government e-mail account that he had set up to communicate with Broadwell free of CIA scrutiny.<\/p>\n

After a series of Democratic scandals in the New York state legislature, Governor Andrew Cuomo is instituting a policy to have the e-mails of state employees automatically deleted after 90 days. Apparently, Cuomo did not want e-trails of politicians\u2019 communications. Meanwhile, the former speaker of the New York state assembly, Sheldon Silver, faces charges of corruption and was forced by subpoena to turn over computer correspondence.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Under the Cuomo plan, a politician like Silver could delay and obfuscate for three months, and then safely assume that almost all of his communications had safely vanished \u2014 in a fashion that pre-e-mail politicians could never have imagined.<\/p>\n

In December 2012, shortly after the re-election of Barack Obama, Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lisa Jackson quietly stepped down without much public notice. Jackson, in apparent violation of the law, had been under federal investigation for fabricating a phony e-mail persona, \u201cRichard Windsor.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jackson, using the Windsor persona, communicated in a way that allowed her to skirt federal record-keeping laws. But Jackson not only wished to exchange e-mail beneath the radar of the federal government that employed her, she also wanted to create an alias that might weigh in favorably on her own agency\u2019s policies.<\/p>\n

In surreal fashion, Jackson\u2019s self-created Windsor also received an award from the EPA for meritorious service \u2014 perhaps the first case of a bureaucrat rewarding her own electronic alter ego.<\/p>\n

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is now trying to explain away her own e-mail scandal. During her tenure, she may have broken federal laws by creating several personal e-mail accounts on her own private server.<\/p>\n

Like Petraeus, Clinton ostensibly sought to avoid leaving an electronic trail that might have allowed the government to have full access to her correspondence, in her case while serving as secretary of state. Earlier, Clinton had issued a cable to State Department employees warning them not to use their personal e-mail accounts for national-security reasons \u2014 even though she herself did exactly that.<\/p>\n

Clinton even went so far as to create her own private-domain server that in effect allowed her to adjudicate which of her government communications would eventually be deleted and which would be retained.<\/p>\n

Consider the controversies that arose and contentious decisions that were made during Clinton\u2019s tenure as secretary of state: failed reset with Vladimir Putin\u2019s Russia, the pullout of all U.S. peacekeepers from Iraq and that country\u2019s subsequent implosion, the estrangement from Israel, the killing of U.S. personnel in Benghazi and the scapegoating of an obscure video-maker. In theory, Clinton alone could have chosen to release official or unofficial communications that she found useful and to simply delete those she found problematic \u2014 messages that, most likely, only her staff knew existed.<\/p>\n

Why, otherwise, would Clinton avoid all standard, required government e-mail accounts to create her own for official business \u2014 even with the risk that her shenanigans would be exposed as unsecure, unethical, and potentially unlawful?<\/p>\n

In all of these e-mail scandals, the root of the problem is not, as is sometimes alleged, undue government intrusiveness into the private lives of federal officials. After all, the public deserves transparency \u2014 even with regard to bureaucrats\u2019 private correspondence, at least while they are in office and communicating as public figures.<\/p>\n

Public service is also voluntary. It is usually of a limited nature. And it requires accountability to the public.<\/p>\n

The real problem is that our public servants are using their electronic correspondence to affect their public records \u2014 indeed, to massage history itself far more easily than had been done in the pre-computer age.<\/p>\n

A CIA director who is entrusted with the nation\u2019s secrets cannot use e-mail to facilitate secret lives in a way that would be difficult with just postage stamps and phone calls.<\/p>\n

Jackson created a false identity that enhanced her own reputation in a way that would have been nearly impossible with a typewriter or pencil.<\/p>\n

With the aid of high-tech correspondence, Clinton attempted to decide for herself which of her e-mails should be subject to oversight \u2014 in a manner difficult for prior secretaries of the pre-electronic age who were forced to leave a clumsy carbon paper trail.<\/p>\n

E-mail speeds things up. It expands the power of communications and allows one to message far more people, far more often \u2014 and sometimes more stealthily.<\/p>\n

Our public servants who get caught up in these electronic scandals are not victims of a new face of intrusive Big Brother. Instead, they are using technology to become a sort of Big Brother themselves.<\/p>\n

\u00a9 2015 Tribune Media Services, Inc.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From Petraeus to Hillary, public servants have been trying to manipulate the historical record in their favor. by Victor Davis Hanson\u00a0\/\/ National Review Online Former CIA director David Petraeus plea-bargained to a misdemeanor count of unauthorized removal and retention of classified material after having given classified government information to his one-time mistress, Paula Broadwell. How […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[185],"tags":[993,918],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-29C","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":8988,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obama-administration-needs-to-abandon-its-petraeus-obsession\/","url_meta":{"origin":8284,"position":0},"title":"Obama Administration Needs to Abandon Its Petraeus Obsession","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 31, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ Tribune Media Services In politically driven moods, the ancient Romans often wiped from history all mention of a prior hero or celebrity. They called such erasures damnatio memoriae. The Soviet Union likewise airbrushed away, or \"Trotskyized,\" all the images of any past kingpin who became politically\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"rfr","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/rfr-e1454252522115.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":332,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/down-from-olympus\/","url_meta":{"origin":8284,"position":1},"title":"Down from Olympus","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 19, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0The Corner David Petraeus\u2019s resignation marks the end of one of the great postwar military and government careers \u2014 his successful surge in Iraq being analogous to and as impressive as Matthew Ridgway\u2019s salvation of Korea or Sherman\u2019s sudden taking of Atlanta that saved Lincoln\u2019s and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Benghazi"","block_context":{"text":"Benghazi","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/benghazi\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9229,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-nation-of-laws-sort-of\/","url_meta":{"origin":8284,"position":2},"title":"A Nation of Laws\u2014Sort Of","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 7, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"By Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ Works and Days by PJ Media Any fair reading of State Department and general federal government laws regarding the use of classified information by federal employees makes it is clear that Hillary Clinton violated the law\u2014both by improperly setting up her own private server, and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Campaign 2016"","block_context":{"text":"Campaign 2016","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/campaign-2016\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"hillary_clinton_mugshot_article_banner_4-2-16-1.sized-770x415xc","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/hillary_clinton_mugshot_article_banner_4-2-16-1.sized-770x415xc.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/hillary_clinton_mugshot_article_banner_4-2-16-1.sized-770x415xc.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/hillary_clinton_mugshot_article_banner_4-2-16-1.sized-770x415xc.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/hillary_clinton_mugshot_article_banner_4-2-16-1.sized-770x415xc.jpg?resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":326,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/oh-what-a-tangled-web\/","url_meta":{"origin":8284,"position":3},"title":"Oh What a Tangled Web","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 21, 2012","format":"gallery","excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Supporters of President Obama have dubbed those who question administration statements about Libya as either partisans or conspiracy theorists, on the premise that the administration had no reason to dissimulate. 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