JB: Global Secretary of Fracking, eh? I'm quite sure that Hillary would not be enamored with that moniker. Especially, as she is maneuvering herself leftward during the primaries. I'd like to know more about the secretive ad you referred to before. Isn't "secretive ad" an oxymoron?
SH: Of course she'd disagree and that's fine! But the facts speak for themselves. I don't think she'd be willing to sit and have an actual factual debate about these documents, and so her disagreement would ring hollow. As intrepid investigative journalist Izzy Stone once said, "All governments lie and nothing they say should be believed."
Which gets us to the ad. It's a seeming oxymoron, but what I mean by that is that it only ran in key districts that she was pandering to as an anti-fracking candidate in New York State, the first state in the union to ban fracking. She needed the anti-fracking vote in the state (it's a powerful voting bloc there, see the 2014 gubernatorial election that saw Green Party and anti-fracking candidate Howie Hawkins get about 5% of the vote), so she ran the ad on TV.
But the Clinton campaign didn't publish it online. Someone else saw it on TV (Brad Johnson of Climate Hawk Vote) and published it on YouTube. The Clinton campaign did not respond to questions for comment for our article, so it's still not clear why they haven't put the ad up like the rest of the ads they've run on TV and then put on YouTube.
But a likely answer is that the campaign still wants to rake in oil and gas money from lobbyists, individuals, etc., not wage any sort of assault on the frackers, as her opponent in the Democratic Party primary, Bernie Sanders, would (he supports a national ban). That money she's taken from the industry has of course been a great controversy and was elevated by the Greenpeace USA video that went viral in which she said she was "so sick" of the Sanders campaign "lying" about the fossil fuel industry money she'd taken for her campaign.
JB: I suppose it makes sense that she wants to have her cake and eat it too: she wants the support of the strong anti-fracking faction without jeopardizing big bucks from the industry they oppose. Who wouldn't if they could get away with it? And, so far, she's been able to pull that off pretty well, although, with social media in the mix, it's harder to do these days. I guess the Sanders campaign wasn't lying about the fossil fuel industry money after all!
But Hillary's led a charmed existence up until now considering that this whole email private server issue has been known for years; the Guccifer hack happened way back in 2013. Why is it taking so long for these stories to grow legs, Steve?
SH: Yeah, well anyone who cares about a sustainable planet wouldn't support it, but maybe the cake in the White House tastes better than the cake we all get to eat and we just wouldn't understand! At this point she could almost get away with anything due to the general public's fear of a potential Trump presidency. Welcome to U.S. presidential politics, where every four years -- in the void of a sustainable progressive third party being built -- we get a Democrat who runs his or her campaign on the politics of fear and lesser evilism. Groundhog Day should really be celebrated in November every four years during presidential cycles, not annually in February!
All joking and half-joking aside, I don't actually think as many people in the public took the Guccifer hack seriously in that they didn't think she literally had stored all of the emails on a private server. Maybe just some. No one, or at least few, thought she could be so cynical. Turns out they were wrong and this was a systemic effort by her and her top aides to dodge transparency. How many emails went "missing" that the public will never see? I hate to say it, but we'll never know.
JB: Several points: one, doesn't the FBI have virtually all of those once missing emails? So, we may not know but they do, and they can decide what to do about what the emails reveal, if FBI Chief Comey doesn't fold under pressure from the top not to indict. Also, Bryan Pagliano, Hillary's IT guy, whose entire cache of emails from the four years he served her has also gone missing, was offered immunity and may have lots to say that will shed light on the situation. You mentioned that Hillary's aides also using the private server is key to the whole puzzle. Tell us more about how and why that is relevant, please.
SH: It matters because it was an inner-circle, not just Clinton, privy to this secretive email server and non-state.gov email address. Transparency is a hallmark of democracy, secrecy a hallmark of tyranny. It shows, I'd say without a doubt, that Clinton and her inner-circle saw themselves as above the law (both FOIA and NARA, the National Archives and Records Administration and the laws enveloped in that agency that have to do with record-keeping and storage for historical posterity). Hell, Bob Woodward of Pentagon Papers and Washington Post fame even said Clinton's behavior here "reminds me of the Nixon tapes."
Bernie Sanders said "America is sick of hearing about ya damn emails" and Clinton apologists say the email thing is not a big deal and some sort of right-wing conspiracy theory, but I really don't see it that way. Obviously a lot of the emails have been retrieved and the FBI says they have them all in their possession now, but how the heck do we know? What went missing or is now gone? Is the FBI telling the truth? Hard to have definitive answers here, but certainly troubling questions that raise troubling thoughts.
JB: Indeed. I checked out the Woodward reference, which I had not heard before. It's from August of last year, before all the new revelations. I wanted to discuss the State Department review. This report by the Inspector General was delivered to Congress today, May 25th. Apparently, Hillary and her aides declined to be interviewed for the review. Nevertheless, the report was very critical of her and her email practices. What can you tell us, Steve?
SH: Honestly, I can't tell you much other than what the press has reported. It's 83 pages and I'm looking forward to reading it! But it's a big deal and I encourage people to read it for themselves and come to their own conclusions. Primary documents generally tell the real story of how the government (and corporations) work and for whom and this is no different.
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