Until now, all of the fuss about Hillary Clinton’s email insecurity has been the subject of political theater with little attention focused on the bigger issues at play including the situation of the nation’s security. The truth of the matter, according to defense expert Pierre Sprey, is that “the complexity of this situation is very simple.”
Sprey explained that simple truth in an interview on the James T. Harris radio show, in Tucson, last week. “We have wrecked our security system because of the politics of the Pentagon and the politics of the White House,” asserted Sprey. “My own view on all of this,” said Sprey referring to Clinton’s email scandal, “this is minor compared to the overall abuse of the classification system.”
“We’re abusing the security system to over classify stuff,” stated Sprey who alleges we currently “classify stuff just because it’s embarrassing. Not because it gives aid and comfort to the enemy. Because it’s embarrassing.”
Sprey explained, “In other words we’re classifying it to hide it from Americans. If the enemy knew it he wouldn’t do anything different than if he didn’t know it. It’s Americans who might do something different if they knew it. When you do that first of all you instantly create a leaky system. Because you get people who see that this is a disgrace that this was classified. This is information Americans ought to know and then you start getting leaks.”
This situation would explain the actions of Edward Snowden, the former CIA employee who leaked information from the Nation Security Administration (NSA) in 2013. While the country remains divided as to whether Snowden was a traitor or a patriot, Sprey contends that whether the leakers are ill-intentioned or well-intentioned; “it doesn’t matter. It means the system’s no longer secure because you ruined the basis of the system.” That basis, according to Sprey, is the line between information that is really important, and information which “must not be known by the enemy. But people take it much more lightly no matter what the stamp is when they know it is just being hidden from Americans.”
Sprey told Harris that the whole system became politicized at least 40 years ago. “The only way you can keep really important information secure is to have very small groups of people who have it and make sure there’s very little of the information. You can’t have tons of super classified information and not expect that it be leaked to the enemy. I mean it just can’t be done. The World War II tradition was they were very careful about what they gave very high, top secret and beyond clearances. That it was a relatively small amount of it and a tiny number of people with access to it. We now have a million and a half people with top secret clearances. That means you don’t have a security system. You can forget about it.”
Sprey chalked it up to the sheer size of government; “particularly because of the size of the intelligence agencies. We’ve simply spent vastly too much on intelligence agencies. They are simply too large. And that has other ramifications besides being insecure. But we’re talking about security. Too much money means too insecure. Period.”
Sprey says there are too many bureaucrats handling the information and “too many people with axes to grind like hiding stuff from Americans.”
Sprey argues that “when the politicians enter it gets even worse. Then the White House enters and they don’t want stuff out about Benghazi because they’ve done some stupid stuff there and their security there wasn’t very good and their doing something they really shouldn’t be. They’re smuggling arms out of Benghazi into Syria. You know? And why is that classified? Because they don’t want Americans to know that. You can bet their bottom bippy that ISIS knows they were smuggling out of Benghazi. That’s no news to them, but it’s news to Americans.”
Harris asked Sprey, “So, it’s keeping it from ourselves? Keeping it from American people?”
“Exactly. And that is really serious,” responded Sprey. “First of all it means you have a system that is leaky as a sieve and secondly it means your system is being used to destroy democracy.”