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Are Demwits willing to go down standing on the deck of an Iranian ship? (See 1 below.)
$150 billion can buy lots of trouble and will but what difference does it make. (See 1a below.)
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Boehner and McConnell beholden to corporate interests and Allen West is right - ditch the Export Import Bank! (See 2 below.)
While they are at it, defund tax payer money to Planned Parenthood and close the Department of Education for starters.
While they are at it, defund tax payer money to Planned Parenthood and close the Department of Education for starters.
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John's father, Norman, predicted where things are likely to go in a marvelous and insightful book: "WW 4" and now one can argue Obama and Kerry are causing it to happen. (See 3 below.)
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Now for some humor:
The following questions were in last year's GED (grade 12 equivalent) examination
(These are genuine answers). A. Q. What is a turbine? Something an Arab or Sheik wears on his head. Once an Arab boy reaches puberty, he removes his diaper and wraps it around his head.
B. Q. In a democratic society, how important are elections?
A. Very important. Sex can only happen when a male gets an election.C. Q. How can you delay milk turning sour? A. Keep it in the cow. (Simple, but brilliant) D. Q. What is the most common form of birth control? A. Most people prevent contraception by wearing a condominium. (That would work.) e) Q. What is a terminal illness? A. When you are sick at the airport. (Irrefutable) f. Q. Name the four seasons
A. Salt, pepper, mustard and vinegar.
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Must hear:
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1)Marty Peretz: The Democratic Party, on the Edge of the Abyss
Two of the most powerful members of the Democratic Party, former and current senators from New York, now hold the fate of the putative deal with Iran in their hands. Because they alone can overturn it, this means that presumptive presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and presumptive Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer carry a heavy burden that will deeply affect their personal reputations and, most probably, the trustworthiness of the Democrats in foreign policy for at least a generation.
Their former senatorial colleagues Barack Obama, Joe Biden and John Kerry already own their decision, though their logic still remains unclear to both the most diligent and the most casual observer. The president asserts that his piece of paper will prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons, presuming both the honesty of a regime that has displayed mendacity and hostility for 35 years as well as the existence of a wide-ranging verification capability that his own agreement has fatally compromised. And then, of course, there is the sunset provision that enables Iran to acquire nuclear weapons anyway. As they congratulate themselves on the hard work that produced this bizarre document—Bloomberg
News related that “[a]ll present were in a kind of awe”—have these former Solons stopped to wonder why Iran negotiated in the first place when their leaders still insist on claiming they don’t want nuclear weapons? The entire process is built on lies. If the Iranians didn’t want nukes, then why would they want a time limit?
Of course the Iranians are dissimulating—they want the funds that come from sanctions relief, the legitimacy that comes from press conferences with great powers in central Europe, and, finally, an eased path to nuclear weapons. They have managed to achieve all three, without having to pause their “Death to America” street rallies, return their American hostages, curb their aggression in the Middle East, or release their defrauded presidential candidates from house arrest. (Nor has the U.S. President seen fit to even mention these ongoing depredations.) On the U.S. side, the assertion is that Iran will modify its irredentist behavior, even as its last demand (to which Obama and Kerry shamefully caved) was to lift the arms and ballistic missile embargos. Not exactly evidence-based decision-making when you consider the Ayatollah Khamenei’s comment just this weekend: “Our policies toward the arrogant government of the United States will not be changed at all.”
Diplomats may be sent abroad to lie for their country, according to the saying, but they ought to be honest at least with themselves. Honesty is the most obvious ingredient missing in the aftermath of the agreement. The Administration’s apparent thinking, if that is not too dignified a term, is that Iran as a Persian Shi’ite power can serve as a counterweight to the Arab Sunni majority in the Middle East. The White House has occasionally let slip that former professor Obama has “gone to school” on the concept of balance of power. But what a weird way he has of balancing.
Consider the last six years of our President’s policies. Having supported the majority Shi’ite population in Iraq and strengthened Iranian influence there, he proceeded to avoid supporting the majority Sunni population in Syria, thereby strengthening Iranian influence there too. We also declined to leave even a modest troop presence in Iraq on the fatuous premise that we would thus “end the war.” On top of all of this, and emblematic of the lack of principle in our president’s vaporous philosophy of “change,” was his willingness to allow the famous Syrian red line against the use of chemical weapons to be casually crossed.
Taken together, these decisions produced a vacuum that has led to the rise of ISIS, fueled by a combination of grievance toward the mullahs and their Syrian and Iraqi proxies as well as American incompetence and indifference. This result was not only foreseeable but was foreseen: Hillary Clinton was eager to admit in her most recent memoir that she wanted to do more for the Syrian opposition.
Whatever else the U.S. has done in the Middle East under Obama, it has certainly not balanced any power. We have not required nor even apparently requested any change of Iranian behavior in the region, so the mullahs and their gunmen continue energetically disrupting the status quo, from Yemen to Lebanon, from Gaza to Bahrain. And predictably, as Iranian efforts expand, ISIS grows stronger. Perhaps the president shares the excitement of this disruptive revolutionary moment, but it clearly has nothing to do with the protection of American interests or the improvement of life for the average Sunni or Shi’a Muslim.
This dissonance between Administration aims and the facts on the ground has reached its nadir in the negotiations with Iran. Strangely, the President and the Secretary of State wanted to separate the issue of the nature and conduct of the Iranian regime from the nuclear issue. Most would think that a negotiation over the details of uranium enrichment would take into account the behavior of those who will control the uranium once it is enriched. And that the government of the United States, which provides hundreds of billions in sanctions relief, might also want to consider how that money would be spent. The Iranians certainly recognized these two issues as linked, and used that linkage to their advantage, insisting, with Russia’s predictable help, on the easing of the arms embargo. (No surprise there: The Russians are delighted to constrain American power and undermine American interests.) This was the capstone achievement of our team’s incompetent approach: The U.S. excluded nonnuclear issues that conduced to our interests in order to get a deal, while Iran then included nonnuclear issues to their benefit because the U.S. wanted to get a deal. Obama calls this “negotiating from strength.”
To see how confused and even absurd the Democratic approach has been to Iran, consider the case of Korea. Does anyone think that if Obama withdrew the 30,000-odd U.S. troops in South Korea that he would “end the war”? On Obama’s logic, we should be exiting our troops immediately and freeing up hundreds of billions of dollars of funds over the next decade for North Korea, while enabling a sponsor like China to sell them conventional arms and ballistic missile technology. Then we can sit back and “hope” that North Korea will “change.”
Two decades ago, the North Koreans challenged the administration of our last Democratic president in the same way as Iran challenges our current one. Who can forget The New York Times’s editorial judgment in 1993 that “President Clinton is adopting a sound diplomatic strategy for coaxing North Korea to give up its nuclear ambitions” by “rightly resisting pressure to get tough with Pyongyang”? This month, one day after the Ayatollah said emphatically the deal will not change his country’s attitude toward the U.S., the Times asserts that President Obama “was right to keep the focus on restraining” the Iran nuclear program, but that if the sanctions are not lifted quickly enough, the so-called Iranian “moderates” could be discredited, “boosting the hard-liners.” Cognitive dissonance seems to be the official editorial policy of the Democratic elite.
The obvious point is that the nature of the Iranian regime matters, just as the nature of the North Korean regime matters. While our leaders take a holiday from history, the bad actors of the world do not take much of a vacation. American voters know this, which is likely why Obama did not disclose his detailed intentions regarding Iran in his 2012 re-election campaign. But now many Democrats complain that supporting the deal is their only choice. Moreover, the president, this time through the agency of his UN ambassador, the putative idealist Samantha Power, has laid a procedural trap for the wavering Democrats by introducing the big power treaty to the Security Council where it has already passed. This will make congressional review doubly difficult, and more than doubly important. In any case, the compact deserves negation on its own terms. But, as it happens, the Ayatollah who truly runs Iran declared on the morrow of the announcement of the agreement his intention to wage war. On Israel, no surprise. And on us, the U.S., the very architect of this peace.
Obama the star negotiator has told us that the only other alternative to this treaty is to resolve the Iranian issue “through force, through war.” But, of course, there are other alternatives to war than deficient deals that damage our interests. Fortunately, America is full of talented, responsible, creative negotiators who can improve on the woefully low bar set by Obama, Biden, and Kerry in this catastrophic bargaining process. There is no reason Senator Schumer, with Secretary Clinton’s backing, cannot lead a consensus in Congress to tie a set of focused, reasonable conditions to their support for the existing deal. Since Iran was happy to trade and re-trade right up to the negotiators’ self-imposed deadline, and then extend the deadline, there is no reason Congress cannot exercise its constitutional prerogative and send the administration back to the table with some improvements. For starters: Cancel the automatic removal of the conventional arms embargo in five years and the ballistic-missile ban in eight years and link them to a future vote in Congress, which will depend crucially on concrete Iranian behavior; release immediately all American hostages held in Iran; insist that Iran come clean immediately about prior illegal military nuclear activities; and enhance the verification procedure to ensure quick inspector access to any suspect Iranian site upon demand within a week. If those four conditions are incorporated in the deal, the U.S. Congress will then lift American sanctions.
Obama and Kerry will naturally protest, as will the allies, that we are re-opening the so-called agreement. The “awe” reported by Bloomberg might dissipate. But Iran happily reneged upon the April agreement, so why do Americans and the Democratic Party have to be shackled permanently to a poorly conceived and weakly negotiated deal? The outcome will be imperfect. You could anticipate a situation where the Europeans lift sanctions and the U.S. does not. Such are the consequences of incompetence. But U.S. sanctions do matter, and their continuation (in the absence of reasonable satisfaction of congressional conditions) will affect Iranian calculations. Moreover, the uncertainty created in the Iranian leadership will restore some leverage to the next American president. If Schumer and Clinton instead passively capitulate to the flawed approach of the administration, they will bear their full share of responsibility for the substance of the deal and the consequences for their party.
About this matter of political consequences: has the Democratic Party forgotten the McGovernite legacy from which it fought for so long, and for a time so successfully, to free itself? The George W. Bush Administration’s post-invasion missteps in Iraq, and their grisly consequences, have given the Democrats a dangerous sense of their own freedom: Americans may oppose aggression without strategy, but history has shown that they also oppose idealism without strength and pragmatism without principle.
Our current president flatters himself with comparisons to Abraham Lincoln. But Lincoln knew about confronting adversarial regimes possessed of corrupt, intolerant and militant principles. Even as he worried about losing his re-election bid 151 years ago this summer to New York Democrat Gen. George B. McClellan, who advocated a quick peace with the South and an end to emancipation, he sent Gen. Philip Sheridan to destroy the economic infrastructure of the Shenandoah Valley and Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman to do the same in Georgia. Lincoln understood that there are some illegitimate regimes that demand resistance rather than compromise.
Martin Peretz was editor-in-chief of The New Republic from 1974 to 2013. This article was originally published by The Tower.
1a)
Iran Deal: $150 Billion to Fund Obama's War
In 1947, U.S. President Truman made history by launching the Marshall Plan, sending $13 billion (about $140 billion in today's dollars) to help rebuild post-war Europe, in order to prevent Western Europe from falling to Communist expansion.
Today President Obama is trying to make history through an Iranian nuclear deal that will give an astounding $150 billion of sanctions relief to a regime that was in 2014 considered by the U.S. Department of State, along with Sudan and Syria, one of the world's leading sponsors of terrorism.
The Marshall Plan was spread out over 17 countries that were U.S. allies and considered critical in the long struggle that would put Soviet communism on the “ash-heap of history,” in the words of President Ronald Reagan.
Under the President Obama's disastrous Iran nuclear deal, $150 billion would go to a single regime that has been a state sponsor of terrorism for the entire 36 years of its existence. $150 billion is an enormous amount of money to the Iranian regime, whose failed statist economic policies, ongoing expansionism and internal mismanagement — not even to speak of its horrifying human rights record in imprisonments, torture, and widespread executions — have led to a stagnant economy.
How might Iran spend the $150 billion? Iran has brutally cracked down on dissent in its own country. It brutally imprisoned, tortured, and murdered those in the Green Movement, whose peaceful demonstrations, begun in 2009, had brought together up to three million protesters, and which threatened to topple the regime.
With the new inflow of money, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) will have many more resources at its disposal to crush dissent and tighten its grip on power, making regime change — which should be our urgent and ultimate goal, rather than a fleeting nuclear deal — all the more unlikely.
Iran has backed the Assad regime in Syria, helping it keep control in a brutal civil war that has cost over 210,000 lives. Assad even wrote a congratulatory letter to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei about the deal, probably in the likely assumption that he will get a substantial boost from this $150 billion boom.
A flush $150 billion in the hands of the Iranian regime will also likely give a boost to the Iranian-sponsored Houthi rebels trying to take over Yemen. Iran has in the past used its Shia militias to kill an estimated 500 Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan.
While the Iraqi Shia militias may be fighting ISIS now, they almost certainly will be fighting and killing more moderate Sunnis in Iraq, who worked with the U.S. government and are willing to work for a peaceful Iraq.
Iran has long backed Hezbollah, Hamas and other terrorist groups trying to destroy Israel. Iran is already sending millions of dollars to Hamas to build and repair tunnels for use in kidnapping and murdering Israelis, and to rebuild Hamas's missile supply. Iran's Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah, already has an estimated 100,000 missiles it could use to attack Israel.
With $150 billion, Iran can fund a massive new war against Israel through its terrorist proxies — using conventional weapons — to try to obliterate Israel even before Iran gets nuclear weapons. The fact that Iran pushed to have the UN arms embargo lifted as part of the nuclear deal shows its intentions for where to spend this $150 billion.
The Iran deal, in five years, will actually lift a ban on sending Iran conventional weapons, including (in eight years) intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of hitting the United States. But Iran is already wasting no time buying weapons and producing weapons on its own. Russia recently finalized the sale to Iran of the S-300 anti-aircraft missile system — in violation of the existing embargo.
Although there may still be an official UN arms embargo on Iran, there is no ban the transfer of raw materials that they could use to make arms domestically. Iran already has an advanced weapons manufacturing industry.
If the Iran nuclear deal goes through, the mullahs will have to decide how much of the $150 billion will be used to boost their own arms manufacturing efforts and shore up their domestic reign of terror, and how much will be shared with their totalitarian and terrorist allies?
The Iran deal does not prevent a nuclear Iran. At best, it only delays it a few years.
Iran has brazenly vowed not to change its current policies and will continue to finance war, through its terrorist partners, against Israel and Sunni Muslim states. With ICBMs, Iran will not only threaten Middle East neighbors, but also the United States and Europe.
Iran has brazenly vowed not to change its current policies and will continue to finance war, through its terrorist partners, against Israel and Sunni Muslim states. With ICBMs, Iran will not only threaten Middle East neighbors, but also the United States and Europe.
When President Obama leaves office, he may think that any catastrophe caused by the Iran deal will not “technically” be his, but the next president's. But it is his. It's as if someone is lighting a long fuse and will then say he was not near the dynamite when it detonated. Any explosions that result from this huge military and financial payday to Iran will, and should, be known as “Obama's war.”
Members of the U.S. Congress should move swiftly and boldly to vote this terrible deal down and try to stop the $150 billion from going to boost tyranny and terrorism and spread war throughout a region already on fire
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2)The reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank is a bad idea on many levels. Yet, the Senate voted late Monday night to reauthorize the Export-Import Bank using a series of convoluted parliamentary procedures that blocked opposition and permitted the Export-Import Bank to bypass the normal law-making procedures. In effect, the Senate Majority Leader advanced the Export-Import Bank as an amendment to the unrelated highway reauthorization bill, while at the same time forbidding every other amendment.
The Senate Majority Leader used the same parliamentary tricks that he despised when the Democrats were in the majority, which might have been defensible if he were doing something laudable like reforming entitlements or lowering the deficit. Instead, the Senate Majority Leader used the strong-arm parliamentary tactics to promote crony capitalism at the expense of taxpayers. The highway bill, with the Export-Import Bank amendment attached, will now head over to the House of Representatives. We don’t endorse or oppose specific pieces of legislation, but we hope House leaders will recognize bad economic policy when they see it.
As I’ve explained before, America should ditch the Export-Import Bank. It duplicates private venture capital activities that the private lending industry should be doing. Worse yet, the Export-Import Bank has an unfair advantage over the private lending industry because it can artificially lower credit prices by shifting the cost of credit risk to the American taxpayer.
By offering credit that is less expensive than what is available in the marketplace, the Export-Import Bank allows businesses to profit at the expense of taxpayers, making it little more than a form of corporate welfare. That type of corporate welfare wouldn’t seem so bad if we were helping American small businesses. However, more than three-quarters of Export-Import Bank assistance goes to just a handful of big businesses, like Boeing, General Electric and Caterpillar.
Furthermore, the Export-Import Bank is perverse foreign aid. It encourages foreign countries to delay or avoid needed anti-corruption and other financial reforms, relying instead on the generosity of American taxpayers. In some foreign countries, credit risks are much higher because of weak private property laws and corrupt economic policies. Foreign governments should be working to create better investment environments to attract their own investment capital, instead of relying on the Export-Import Bank.
In addition to these and other arguments, I add one more reason not to reauthorize the Export-Import Bank: As a global economic leader, America should promote free markets based on sound economic principles to grow our manufacturing sector and trade with other nations, instead of promoting a worldwide system of trade that relies on the corrupt underpinnings of the Export-Import Bank.
America’s leadership and influence throughout the world is felt primarily through our economic might, fueled by a free economy, and backed by the strongest military on the planet. Our free-market economy, blessed with vast resources and largely unencumbered by government restrictions and regulations, was the envy of the world throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Pro-growth policies like low taxes, free trade and minimal regulation allowed U.S. manufacturers to grow and flourish in the United States and export their products throughout the world.
However, because other countries do not always rely on the strength of free markets, they create export credit agencies to make their own exports more attractive to international customers. These foreign export credit agencies redistribute the wealth of their citizens, artificially distort capital investment, and bend job creation toward government favorites.
The Export-Import Bank was ostensibly created to support America’s strong manufacturing sector and promote free trade. However, like so many misguided government departments and agencies, the Export-Import Bank has become little more than a corporate welfare program to compete against other corrupt export credit agencies throughout the world, a roadblock to American ingenuity and entrepreneurship. The Export-Import Bank doesn’t help U.S. manufacturing and trade as much as it simply participates in this worldwide racket of corruption and bad economics.
Supporters of the Export-Import Bank make a case in favor of this 80-year-old New Deal program, saying that our global leadership depends on a strong manufacturing sector that exports goods and services throughout the world. It is true that our leadership in the world largely depends on strong manufacturing and trade. But America is a global leader in spite of the Export-Import Bank, not because of it.
In fact, the Export-Import Bank finances less than two percent of U.S. exports. And by favoring some manufacturers over others, the Export-Import bank can actually harm innovative American manufacturers and hinder economic growth that might otherwise happen if it weren’t for the Export-Import Bank.
As a world leader, the United States should lead. Instead of participating in a corrupt system where governments pick winners and losers, the United States should ditch the Export-Import Bank and lead the world to a better system of free trade, low taxes and minimal regulation. Unfortunately, the Senate’s recent passage of the Export-Import Bank amendment signals that this probably isn’t going to happen anytime soon.
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3)
Israel’s Choice: Conventional War Now, or Nuclear War Later
There was no ‘better deal’ with Iran to be had. Now this calamitous one offers Tehran two paths
to the bomb.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at a Likud faction meeting at the Knesset in Jerusalem, July 27, 2015. Photo: Zuma PressBy Norman Podhoretz - July 28, 2015 7:17 p.m. ET
Almost everyone who opposes the deal President Obama has struck with Iran hotly contests his relentless insistence that the only alternative to it is war. No, they claim, there is another alternative, and that is “a better deal.”
To which Mr. Obama responds that Iran would never agree to the terms his critics imagine could be imposed. These terms would include the toughening rather than the lifting of sanctions; “anytime, anywhere” nuclear-plant inspections instead of the easily evaded ones to which he has agreed; the elimination rather than the freezing of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure; and the corresponding elimination of the “sunset” clause that leaves Iran free after 10 years to build as many nuclear weapons as it wishes.
Since I too consider Mr. Obama’s deal a calamity, I would be happy to add my voice to the critical chorus. Indeed, I agree wholeheartedly with the critics that, far from “cutting off any pathway Iran could take to develop a nuclear weapon,” as he claims, the deal actually offers Tehran not one but two paths to acquiring the bomb. Iran can either cheat or simply wait for the sunset clause to kick in, while proceeding more or less legally to prepare for that glorious day.
Unfortunately, however, I am unable to escape the conclusion that Mr. Obama is right when he dismisses as a nonstarter the kind of “better deal” his critics propose. Nor, given that the six other parties to the negotiations are eager to do business with Iran, could these stringent conditions be imposed if the U.S. were to walk away without a deal. The upshot is that if the objective remains preventing Iran from getting the bomb, the only way to do so is to bomb Iran.
And there’s the rub. Once upon a time the U.S. and just about every other country on earth believed that achieving this objective was absolutely necessary to the safety of the world, and that it could be done through negotiations. Yet as the years wore on, it became increasingly clear to everyone not blinded by wishful delusions that diplomacy would never work.
Simultaneously it also became clear that the U.S. and the six other parties to the negotiations, despite their protestations that force remained “on the table,” would never resort to it (and that Mr. Obama was hellbent on stopping Israel from taking military action on its own). Hence they all set about persuading themselves that their fears of a nuclear Iran had been excessive, and that we could live with a nuclear Iran as we had lived with Russia and China during the Cold War.
Out the window went the previously compelling case against that possibility made by authoritative scholars like Bernard Lewis, and with it went the assumption that the purpose of the negotiations was to prevent Iran from getting the bomb.
For our negotiating partners, the new goal was to open the way to lucrative business contracts, but for Mr. Obama it was to remove the biggest obstacle to his long-standing dream of a U.S. détente with Iran. To realize this dream, he was ready to concede just about anything the Iranians wanted—without, of course, admitting that this was tantamount to acquiescence in an Iran armed with nuclear weapons and the rockets to deliver them.To repeat, then, what cannot be stressed too often: If the purpose were still to prevent Iran from getting the bomb, no deal that Iran would conceivably agree to sign could do the trick, leaving war as the only alternative. To that extent, Mr. Obama is also right. But there is an additional wrinkle. For in allowing Iran to get the bomb, he is not averting war. What he is doing is setting the stage for a nuclear war between Iran and Israel.
The reason stems from the fact that, with hardly an exception, all of Israel believes that the Iranians are deadly serious when they proclaim that they are bound and determined to wipe the Jewish state off the map. It follows that once Iran acquires the means to make good on this genocidal commitment, each side will be faced with only two choices: either to rely on the fear of a retaliatory strike to deter the other from striking first, or to launch a pre-emptive strike of its own.
Yet when even a famous Iranian “moderate” like the former President Hashemi Rafsanjani has said—as he did in 2001, contemplating a nuclear exchange—that “the use of even one nuclear bomb inside Israel will destroy everything. However, it will only harm the Islamic world. It is not irrational to contemplate such an eventuality,” how can deterrence work?
The brutal truth is that the actual alternatives before us are not Mr. Obama’s deal or war. They are conventional war now or nuclear war later. John Kerry recently declared that Israel would be making a “huge mistake” to take military action against Iran. But Mr. Kerry, as usual, is spectacularly wrong. Israel would not be making a mistake at all, let alone a huge one. On the contrary, it would actually be sparing itself—and the rest of the world—a nuclear conflagration in the not too distant future.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Mr. Podhoretz was the editor of Commentary magazine from 1960 to 1995. His books include “Why Are Jews Liberals?” (Doubleday, 2009).
4)
Forcing Clinton’s Emails Into the Open
Why we’re suing to make the government do what it seems disinclined to do: get to the bottom of this murky matter.
The Democratic presidential hopeful speaking at an event in New York City, July 24. PHOTO:DENNIS VAN TINE/ZUMA PRESS
The truth about Hillary Clinton’s email practices is murkier than ever.
On Friday news broke that the inspectors general for the State Department and the intelligence community raised serious concerns about the mishandling of classified information in conjunction with Mrs. Clinton’s emails as secretary of state, all of which were routed through a private email account and server. This was followed by reports in this paper that, despite her claims to the contrary, she sent multiple classified emails via her private account. Speaking to a TV station in Des Moines, Iowa, on Sunday, Mrs. Clinton responded by saying “it’ll all work its way out.”
Opinion Journal Video
Editorial Page Editor Paul Gigot on the Democratic candidate’s stance on climate change, tax and trade. Photo credit: Getty Images.
It’s true—the federal court system will now see to that. On July 8 Cause of Action, where I am executive director, filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. It seeks to compel recovery of Mrs. Clinton’s personal email server and all of the federal records it may contain. Our suit takes a unique approach: It is the first asking the court to compel current Secretary of State John Kerry and National Archivist David Ferriero to seek the assistance of the attorney general to recover this material. The Federal Records Act requires them to do so.
We have reason to believe our case will proceed. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit held in 1991 that a private plaintiff may bring a lawsuit under the Administrative Procedure Act to require an agency head and the national archivist to initiate legal action for the recovery of records that were either destroyed or removed in violation of an agency’s guidelines and directives.
Before the court can rule on that question, however, it must first determine whether Mrs. Clinton’s emails are federal records—as defined by the Federal Records Act of 1950 and its amendments—and whether her exclusive use of a private email server constitutes an illegal removal of those records from the State Department’s official record-keeping system.
The State Department has already admitted that at no point during her four-year tenure as secretary of state did Mrs. Clinton turn over her email correspondence to the federal government, routing it instead through an account on her private email server in Chappaqua, N.Y. She turned over some 30,500 emails in December 2014, nearly two years after she left office. She apparently destroyed another 32,000 emails she admitted to sending between 2009 and 2013, claiming that they had no bearing on her work.
Unfortunately for her, Mrs. Clinton’s word is no substitute for federal law. Any employee—no matter how senior—who knowingly withholds or destroys government records has engaged in an illegal act. This is especially applicable to those who leave federal employ, who can face a criminal penalty for violating the Federal Records Act if they “remove Federal records from agency custody.”
Mrs. Clinton plainly violated these provisions of federal law. Moreover, as recent news reports show, she withheld all or part of at least 15 work-related emails from the trove she turned over to the State Department. It would thus strongly appear that Mrs. Clinton failed to differentiate between the official and personal emails sent via her private server.
Then again, such differentiation is the duty of Secretary Kerry and National Archivist Ferriero—which means they should already have recovered all federal records in Mrs. Clinton’s possession through full access to her private email server.
Federal agencies are legally required to maintain control over their employees’ records, including their electronic communications. The Federal Records Act does not give the State Department or any other agency discretion to delay or otherwise neglect this duty.
Pursuant to the law’s regulations, “agencies with access to external electronic mail systems shall ensure that Federal records sent or received on these systems are preserved in the appropriate record keeping system.” Agencies also must ensure “reasonable steps are taken to capture available transmission and receipt data needed by the agency for record keeping purposes.”
The law also plainly states that agency heads must collaborate with the national archivist to “initiate action through the Attorney General for the recovery of records the head of the Federal agency knows or has reason to believe have been unlawfully removed from that agency.” And if the agency itself will not act, it is incumbent upon the archivist to personally “request the Attorney General to initiate such an action, and shall notify the Congress when such a request has been made.”
Since neither Mr. Kerry nor Mr. Ferriero has abided by the law, the federal courts must now compel them to do so. And if the D.C. District Court will not do that, it should still rule on whether Mrs. Clinton illegally removed federal records from the government’s control.
The American public deserves answers and accountability from its government officials. Hillary Clinton’s exclusive use of a private email server while secretary of state is one of the great violations of government transparency in the modern era—a fact reinforced by the troubling developments of the past week. But until the emails stored on her private server are returned to the federal government’s possession, the truth will remain hidden behind a presidential candidate’s campaign-trail claims.
Mr. Epstein is the executive director of Cause of Action, a government-accountability organization.
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