Clinton
Approved Drone Assassinations With Her Cell Phone, Emails Reveal
As
Hillary Clinton climbs to become the first female major US party
presidential nominee, more and more incidents from the notorious
email scandal are being revealed. This time it turns out she used her
cell phone to approve drone assassinations in Pakistan and many other
countries
11
June, 2016
According
to a new FBI report, during 2011-2012, Hillary Clinton, who
served as a Secretary of State at the time of events,
used her cell phone to approve of drone strikes that killed
as many as 1,000 civilians, including up to 200
children in Pakistan alone.
The
drone strikes, conducted in Pakistan,
Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan, and other countries, were the CIA's
responsibility. However, an extremely high number of civilian
casualties eventually made some Pakistani officials stand up against
the drone strikes, which led to the US State Department choosing
intervene. In fact, the State Department criticized the CIA's timing
of the attacks. No objections to the choice of targets
were made.
This
led to a situation where State Department officials were
notified by the CIA before the time of attack,
sometimes only half an hour or so. Thus, Hillary Clinton, as a
head of Department of State, and her aides, effectively
became the ones who authorized the attacks.
According
to FBI reports, Clinton's aides forwarded some of these
notifications to her personal email server, and that's how the
FBI discovered the whole scheme.
The
short time window, during which State Department had to react,
led Clinton to use her own smartphone, because it was,
obviously, faster and more convenient method of communication,
but it was also far from being secure. This is remarkable
given the CIA treats the drone program with the highest levels
of secrecy, explicitly prohibiting any discussion of the
program in public or outside secure channels
of communication.
The
use of a smartphone, in combination with home personal
email server, is in fact mishandling of classified
information — basically a crime, some argue.
The
White House acknowledged in a
press briefing on Thursday, the day that President Obama
endorsed Clinton as a Presidential nominee, that the FBI probe
into Clinton's handling of classified information is a
"criminal investigation." The FBI is
expected to interview Clinton this summer about the
scandal, but law-enforcement officials doubt that criminal
charges will be filed against her, as using
less-than-secure channels of communication is a widespread
practice among US agencies when it comes to time-sensitive
information.
The
investigation is complicated by the fact that, according
to reports, the forwarded emails were "vaguely worded"
and contained no references to drones, the CIA, or information
about the targets. Which, in turn, makes one wonder: how
could State Department authorize an attack they knew almost nothing
about?
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