Hey, Have You Heard About the Top Secret US Drone Program?

[OKNancy]

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/01/hey-have-you-heard-about-top-secret-us-drone-program

The Obama administration confirmed for the first time Friday that Hillary Clinton's unsecured home server contained some of the U.S. government's most closely guarded secrets, censoring 22 emails with material demanding one of the highest levels of classification....The 37 pages include messages recently described by a key intelligence official as concerning so-called "special access programs" — a highly restricted subset of classified material that could point to confidential sources or clandestine programs like drone strikes or government eavesdropping.

Special access programs are the most secret of all secrets, so this sounds bad. But wait. What's this business about drone strikes? That's not much of a secret, is it? Maybe you need a refresher on all this, so let's rewind the Wayback Machine to last August, when we first heard about top secret emails on Clinton's server that turned out to be about drone strikes:

The drone exchange, the officials said, begins with a copy of a news article about the CIA drone program that targets terrorists in Pakistan and elsewhere. While that program is technically top secret, it is well-known and often reported on....The copy makes reference to classified information, and a Clinton adviser follows up by dancing around a top secret in a way that could possibly be inferred as confirmation, the officials said.

Hmmm. A news article? Here's a Politico piece from a couple of weeks ago, when we heard that the inspector general's office was concerned about some of Clinton's emails. Politico's source is a "US official":

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said some or all of the emails deemed to implicate “special access programs” related to U.S. drone strikes....The information in the emails “was not obtained through a classified product, but is considered ‘per se’ classified” because it pertains to drones, the official added....The source noted that the intelligence community considers information about classified operations to be classified even if it appears in news reports or is apparent to eyewitnesses on the ground.

OK then: the emails in question discuss a news article containing information that's widely-known but nonetheless top secret because...um, why not? Here's more from the Ken Dilanian, formerly of the AP and now with NBC News:

The classified material included in the latest batch of Hillary Clinton emails flagged by an internal watchdog involved discussions of CIA drone strikes, which are among the worst kept secrets in Washington, senior U.S. officials briefed on the matter tell NBC News. The officials say the emails included relatively "innocuous" conversations by State Department officials about the CIA drone program.

rest at the link.

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As Dianne Feinstein said.. why is she responsible for emails someone else sent her. She did not write the emails.

[mcar]

1. K&R

Interesting it comes out today but still a nothing burger.

[William769]

2. Anoher CT bites the dust. This has been a good week for that.

Ready & waiting to do the blocks.

[OKNancy]

3. Here is Feinstein's statement

:large

[BooScout]

4. Did you not know...

...apparently Hillary is responsible for everything bad, whether true or false, that has happened in the world in the past century. Right now they are also reviewing all the bad things that happened the century before since some are convinced she was responsible for the Civil War as well....updates at 11.

[yallerdawg]

5. And how perfect for Republican mischief!

The emails are 'classified' - perfect for speculation and innuendo - perfect to feed the Hillary Hate machine.

The question is - why do we have Republican propaganda promoted on a Democratic website?

After the Republicans said this was exactly what they were doing!

How low can you go.

[SunSeeker]

6. This latest email story is just more of the same old bullshit.

ALL 22 emails were also already sitting on the unclassified State Department email system. None of them were even marked classified, let alone top secret, at the time they were sent.

This is CIA overclassification for purposes of withholding it in the FOIA production the State Department is doing per various FOIA request, including the Benghazi committee. 

As Congressman Adam Schiff (one of the few people who has actually seen these emails) said today, this is taken out of context and is a lot less serious than people are portraying. He gave the example of the forwarding of a news story when he spoke about this on one of Fox's Sunday news shows last week. And all of the emails at issue were already sitting on an unclassified server at the State Department. 

The same thing happened with Condoleezza Rice's email when the State Department had to respond to FOIA requests for them. It is a routine thing that reflects an agency turf battle over classification.