A dangerous national security scandal unfolds as government officials use insecure channels to mishandle classified information, exposing a shocking gap in accountability and defense.
This OpEd ran in the Thursday 10 April 2025 print edition as well as in the Tuesday 8 April online edition of the Moscow-Pullman Daily News.
Hillary Clinton lecturing on data security? Has irony finally lost all meaning?
Last week, Hillary Clinton wrote an editorial in the NY Times titled “How Much Dumber Will This Get?” in which she castigates the Trump team over the leaked Signal group chat between Trump officials (Signalgate). “It’s not the hypocrisy that bothers me; it’s the stupidity.” If anyone lacks credibility to criticize Signalgate, it’s Hillary Clinton. She writes:
“We’re all shocked — shocked! — that President Trump and his team don’t actually care about protecting classified information or federal record retention laws.”
Clinton expressing shock at Trump’s mishandling of data is like an arsonist lecturing on fire safety. As Secretary of State, she used an illegal, personal email server—hosted out of the basement of her home—for classified government communications. She even used her personal BlackBerry phone to insecurely access that server.
Clinton’s Microsoft Exchange 2010 server was notoriously vulnerable without regular updates. Even worse, she initially ran Outlook Web Access without encryption, transmitting usernames, passwords, emails—everything including her login credentials—in plain text. Her sensitive communications were essentially broadcast openly to anyone who could intercept network traffic.
Clinton broke federal law—specifically 18 U.S. Code §1924—by using a private email server to mishandle classified documents. She also violated State Department protocols and recordkeeping rules, then conveniently “lost” 31,000 emails to evade transparency and FOIA requests.
At a July 2016 press conference, Trump stated,
“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”
With Exchange’s weak security, it’s highly likely that the NSA, Russia, and China all had access to Clinton’s emails—access denied to ordinary Americans.
Two years ago, I wrote an OpEd titled “They Shouldn’t Be Getting Away with High Crimes,” criticizing Trump, Biden, Pence, and Clinton for mishandling classified documents. Military personnel routinely face jail for similar violations. If standards were applied fairly, these four would already be behind bars.
Lax security practices betray public trust and set a dangerous precedent for how sensitive data is treated. When leaders fail to meet the rigorous standards they demand from others, they endanger our national security and undermine government integrity.
Protecting classified information is a nonpartisan, unwavering commitment. Clinton’s actions, marked by evasion and disregard for accountability, serve as a stark reminder that hypocrisy in national security is dangerous and unacceptable.
The use of the Signal app by government officials for official work is a complex issue. Signal’s strong end-to-end encryption and open-source design offer high-level security, which is why many officials—including those in the Biden administration—turned to it for internal communications.
But Signal’s encryption is only as strong as the device it runs on. Device vulnerabilities and lack of government control create dangerous gaps—especially with classified communications.
Moreover, Signal’s features, like self-deleting messages, complicate compliance with record-keeping laws such as FOIA. This makes it difficult to archive communications in a way that meets legal requirements.
Despite its advanced encryption, Signal remains an uneasy compromise between convenience and security for government use—a factor that partly explains its appeal for bypassing standard controls.
And then there’s the human factor. National Security Adviser Michael Waltz allegedly added Jeffrey Goldberg—The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief and a notorious anti-Trumper—to a Signal group chat labeled “Houthi PC small group,” where officials discussed an airstrike.
For Goldberg to be added, Waltz—or one of his minions—would have needed access to Goldberg’s private contact information, like his phone number or Signal username. Given Goldberg’s high-profile status as a vehement anti-Trumper journalist, it’s unlikely that his personal details would be readily available or shared with Trump’s team. This raises serious doubts about the claim that his inclusion was accidental, as the odds that Goldberg, of all people, would be mistakenly added are infinitesimally slim—someone clearly pulled the string.
Clinton’s recklessness exposes the hypocrisy that endangers national security and undermines public trust. Leaders must be held to uncompromising standards when safeguarding national security. But neither party holds the moral high ground when it comes to protecting classified information. Trump and Clinton, Republicans and Democrats alike, routinely compromise security for expedience.
Leaders must prioritize security over partisan games and accountability over convenience. The integrity of our nation’s classified information hinges on disciplined practices in every detail. When these small standards are compromised, our collective safety and public trust are in peril.
Remember, loose lips sink ships; our leaders must guard our secrets as fiercely as our nation’s future. We owe it to our country to demand unwavering commitment from our leaders—ensuring that national security is never sacrificed for political expediency.