Category Archives: Middle East

POTUS Far From Lame Duck, Progressive ‘To-Do’ Items

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The arrogance of Barack Obama continues. Just a week ago, he declared he could win a third term if he ran again.

“I actually think I’m a pretty good President. I think if I ran, I could win. But I can’t,” Obama ad-libbed during a speech in Ethiopia. “There’s a lot that I’d like to do to keep America moving. But the law is the law, and no person is above the law, not even the president.”

So imagine how blindsided America is about to be from now until January 2017. What more is planned? Normalizing relations with Bashir al Assad? Normalizing relations with North Korea? Suspending Border Patrol operations completely? Federalizing all national banks? Imposing more agency regulations on Americans and business? Making all interstate roads toll roads?

Lack of imagination now could prevent you from being prepared. Consider other countries that don’t impose government tyrannical policies and have a better competing edge. Cutting military personnel to roving 4 day work weeks? Replacing Ruth Bader Gingsberg on the Supreme Court with Cass Sunstein? Bailing out the City of Chicago to the tune of $7 billion?

Let us start with what is coming almost immediately.

Obama’s big climate rule ready for Monday launch

Politico: Supporters say they plan to be at the White House for the announcement of an EPA rule that will take on power plants’ pollution.

President Barack Obama is poised to push ahead with the nation’s most ambitious environmental regulation in decades — a crackdown on power plants’ greenhouse gas emissions that the administration hopes will put the U.S. in striking distance of achieving a global agreement to combat climate change.

Environmentalists supporting the rule say they plan to be at the White House for a Monday afternoon announcement that they hope will feature the president himself, as part of what’s shaping up to be a major sales pitch both within and outside the administration. Allies including Virginia environmental groups, elected officials and green-minded business groups have also scheduled media calls for 3 p.m. Monday to react to the news.

The White House has not confirmed the timing of the announcement.

The regulation is expected to ease up on a few of the most controversial provisions that the Environmental Protection Agency included in its draft proposals in the past two years. But it will still set up a years-long legal and political battle with congressional Republicans and other opponents, who call it the major weapon in Obama’s “War on Coal,” and it promises to become a major point of contention for the 2016 presidential race.

The regulation also puts a capstone on Obama’s efforts to secure a legacy as the president who made a serious assault on global warming, without waiting for action from Congress — though he will have to depend on his successors to carry it through. States will also play a big role, with six governors so far indicating they won’t comply with EPA’s mandates.

Environmentalists, who have been pressing for Obama to announce the rule personally, call it a crucial first step in cutting the pollution that scientists blame for boosting the Earth’s temperatures and lifting sea levels. But they say far steeper cuts will still be needed if the world is to avoid the worst effects of climate change.

“This is a huge part of the president’s commitment to reducing greenhouse gases,” said Carol Browner, Obama’s first-term climate czar, who left the White House several months after the administration’s attempt at comprehensive climate legislation failed in 2010. “He has viewed the issue of climate change as something he has responsibility for under the law — the moral and ethical responsibility domestically, but also globally.”

Opponents vow that the rule will not stand. “We believe it’s legally deficient on a number of fronts and believe it’s going to have a terrible impact on citizens across the country,” said West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, one of several plaintiffs who won a Supreme Court victory this summer over an EPA mercury rule.

Future legal challenges against the climate rule are also likely to end up in front of the Supreme Court.

The broad strokes of the rule are expected to match the drafts that EPA has issued over the past two years: By 2030, existing power plants will have to put out an average of 30 percent less carbon dioxide than they did in 2005 — a goal the U.S. is about halfway to meeting. And the rule effectively bars the construction of new coal-fired power plants, the biggest source of carbon pollution in the U.S.

Together, the requirements would change the way the U.S. produces and uses electricity, continuing an ongoing wave of coal-plant shutdowns while offering legs up to natural gas, solar, wind and maybe nuclear.

For people closely following the rule, the major questions concern how much the final rule will differ from what EPA originally proposed in September 2013 and last June. Sources have said EPA will roll back an interim pollution-cutting deadline that states and power companies attacked as unworkable, to 2022 from 2020. The agency is also expected to abandon its proposal to require future coal-burning plants to capture and store their carbon pollution, an expensive mandate that opponents said would be vulnerable in court because it violates a 2005 energy law.

States are also expected to get an extra year to submit their compliance plans to EPA — 2018 instead of 2017.

Other potential changes could include making it easier for nuclear power plants and their carbon-free emissions to count toward meeting states’ cleanup targets, changing the way that energy-efficiency initiatives are included in calculating states’ reduction goals, and altering the way that EPA’s formulas treat green energy that is produced in one state but sold in another.

And EPA could tweak the complicated formulas that set widely varying cleanup targets for each state, which in last year’s draft ranged from cuts of 11 percent for North Dakota to 72 percent for Washington state. The raw numbers don’t necessarily reflect the degree of difficulty: Washington, for instance, could meet most of its goal by closing one coal plant that’s already scheduled for retirement, EPA has said.

The costs of the rule will be big — but so will the benefits, the administration contends. Last summer, EPA estimated that the portion dealing with existing power plants would bring $55 billion to $93 billion in economic benefits, compared with $7.3 billion to $8.8 billion in costs to the economy.

But EPA’s critics note that the rule comes amid troubling financial times for the coal industry, and might even arrive on the same day that a major coal producer — Virginia-based Alpha Natural Resources — is expected to file for bankruptcy protection. That follows several other high-profile coal company bankruptcy filings.

Environmental regulations like the carbon rule and a forthcoming Interior Department rule meant to protect Appalachian streams are only part of the reason coal has dropped from nearly 50 percent of the nation’s electricity in 2005 to 39 percent last year. Inexpensive natural gas, which burns more cleanly than coal does, has taken a greater share of the market. And in some regions, coal deposits are becoming increasingly more difficult and less economical to mine.

Meanwhile, Obama’s earlier attempts to tackle climate change have struggled too. The House passed a cap-and-trade bill in 2009, but it died in the Senate the following year despite the Democrats holding a large majority. The president also stumbled with an anticlimactic 2009 climate summit in Copenhagen, Denmark. But he revived climate change as a theme late in his 2012 reelection campaign, declaring that “climate change is not a hoax,” and in his second inaugural address, in which he said failing to take on the threat “would betray our children and future generations.”

The credibility of those promises will be at stake in December, when negotiators the U.S. and other nations gather in Paris to try to reach a global climate agreement.

The final rule is also timed for maximum momentum to take advantage of the final year and a half of Obama’s time in office. Litigation over the rule is likely to last through this decade and potentially into the 2020s, making the winner of the 2016 presidential race a key figure in Obama’s climate legacy.

While it remains unclear just how far a Republican president could roll back the regulation, all sides agree a GOP White House would spell significant trouble for the carbon rule. The GOP field of 2016 candidates opposes the rule: Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker said it is “unworkable,” while former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush has called it “irresponsible and ineffective.”

Meanwhile, Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton has pledged to protect the rule, while it garnered praise from rival Martin O’Malley and Bernie Sanders has called for even further climate action.

 

 

Immigration Issue In Germany, Tent Cities

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Failed foreign policy and failed nations have immediate consequences and cause future financial destruction not only for America but for many Western nations, like Germany.

Germany Announces Crackdown on Immigrant ‘Welfare Abuse’

By Chris Köver

Germany has announced plans to curb access to welfare for immigrants from other European Union countries, in an attempt to clamp down on the abuse it claims has been a growing problem over the past year. Under a proposal agreed by the cabinet on Wednesday, Germany could expel EU citizens who have not found work in the country after six months, or who are found to have abused the welfare system. The move comes as other member states such as Britain toughen up social security rules in a bid to curb the so-called “welfare tourism” they say has resulted from EU enlargement. The plan would also tighten access to child benefit, which would only be given to those with a tax identification number, in an effort to stop families from claiming child support in several countries or for children they don’t have. Those convicted of benefits fraud, for example by forging documents or claiming payments while self-employed, could be banned from reentering the country for five years. Opposition politicians say such an entry ban would put it on a collision course with the EU, which maintains strict rules on freedom of movement within the bloc.

Tent Cities Test Germany’s Resolve to Support Swell of Refugees Germany is resorting to tent cities to house a flood of refugees led by Syrians fleeing civil war as soaring costs test the country’s willingness to accept newcomers. The government expects the number of asylum seekers entering the country this year to more than double to 450,000. Caring for them will run as high as 6 billion euros ($6.6 billion), the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper reported this week, citing data collected from the interior ministries of Germany’s 16 states.

The influx presents challenges for Chancellor Angela Merkel and her government, with a majority of the public now favoring stricter immigration rules. Merkel herself was personally caught up in the debate earlier this month when she drove a Palestinian girl to tears after telling her that not all asylum seekers will get to stay.

 

“Migrants have become the No. 1 topic for German voters, replacing the old concerns about unemployment and the economy,” Joerg Forbrig, a senior program director at the German Marshall Fund of the U.S. in Berlin, said by phone. “This issue is the gravitational center and the political magnet for every German election.” While Merkel’s government is giving the states more money to pay for asylum and added staff to shorten the processing time of applications, the sheer number has left them stretched and resorting to tents to house people. Brandenburg, the state surrounding Berlin, has put up 23 army tents to house 280 people — a temporary solution that can only be used as long as the weather remains warm enough.

Mounting Backlog

“Tent accommodations aren’t the exception — the problems are massive,” said Bernd Mesovic, deputy managing director of refugee rights group Pro Asyl, adding that he worries Germany will soon have a backlog of 260,000 undecided asylum cases. Some politicians are pushing for laws that would more clearly identify who can stay and help speed up the deportation of people from countries such as the Balkan states who have little chance of being granted asylum. In Bavaria, Prime Minister Horst Seehofer said this month that he plans to take matters into his own hands and implement “rigorous” measures to more quickly send home rejected asylum seekers. In the poll released Thursday by broadcaster ARD, 63 percent of Germans want a new immigration law, while 27 percent said that’s not necessary. A total of 62 percent of those surveyed in a Bild newspaper poll this week said they support faster expulsion for people who don’t come from war zones.

Tearful Exchange

Uncertainty about her future in Germany left a 14-year-old Palestinian girl in tears at a Merkel town-hall meeting in the northern city of Rostock this month. The girl said her parents came to the country from a refugee camp in Lebanon and were still waiting for a decision on their asylum application four years later — prompting the chancellor to say that “some will have to go back.” The exchange caused a stir on social media and in the German press. This year there has already been 173 arson and other attacks, mainly on uninhabited buildings planned for refugees, in several towns and cities, according to news magazine Der Spiegel. That compares with 175 such attacks in all of 2014. In Troeglitz, located about 200 kilometers (124 miles) southwest of Berlin in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, a building that was to house immigrants was firebombed in April. The town’s mayor quit after receiving threats from neo-Nazis. The issue has become a political topic in the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, where Green party premier Winfried Kretschmann is facing a re-election bid in eight months. Kretschmann’s own party refused his plan to declare more southeastern European countries as safe places of origin, which would have limited the number of those eligible for asylum. Opponents have seized on the matter.

Uncontrolled

“There’s uncontrolled immigration at the moment that exceeds our capacities,” said Joerg Meuthen, the top candidate in the state from the anti-euro party Alternative for Germany. Of the 114,060 applications processed in the first half, 36 percent were granted asylum or protected by a deportation ban, while the rest were refused, according to the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees. At 20 percent, Syrians made up the biggest share of asylum seekers, followed by 18 percent from Kosovo and 14 percent from Albania. “This is a tragedy foretold,” said Shada Islam, director of policy at the Friends of Europe advisory group in Brussels. “When the EU borders states that are at war or broken — and we don’t help them — then anyone could have seen this coming as people flock to a pole of prosperity for a better life.”

Berger to Hillary to Obama and Back to ’67 Lines

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We have enough issues with our own emails but to read the incremental releases of Hillary Clinton’s email while she was Secretary of State deserves combat pay.

In Washington DC, the media brings America the front line people, like those at the White House and cabinet secretaries, but no one pays much attention to those behind the powerbrokers of government, the real hidden workers that have the conversations, write the press releases, write the speeches, write the cables and emails and sit on the chairs lining the walls of governmental meetings. Those hidden people take the notes, measure the responses, slip notes back and forth, do the legwork, make the calls, read the legislation, scour the global media and countless other housekeeping (literally) items.

Nothing is more clear to validate the above assessment than the process of reading Hillary Clinton’s emails.

Hillary was a user of people, she exploited them for the sake of her objectives and to set diplomatic policy which rose to meetings at the White House level.

Many of those ‘staff’ types get re-cycled from administration to lobby outfits and then re-cycled again to the next campaign and administration.

Now for a key email, which proves the clues to the machinations of politics and how we and others get blindsided.

Sandy Berger urged Hillary to portray Bibi as obstacle to peace

By Philip Klein:

Sandy Berger, a former national security adviser for President Bill Clinton who pled guilty to stealing and destroying classified documents, advised Hillary Clinton when she was secretary of state on how to portray Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as the obstacle to peace and how to make his political life “uneasy.”

The revelations came in a new batch of Clinton’s emails released on Friday by the State Department.

In the emails, Berger, who chairs the global business advisory firm Albright Stonebridge Group (along with former Bill Clinton Secretary of State Madeline Albright), outlined a strategy to turn the tables on Netanyahu diplomatically in negotiations with Palestinians.

“The objective is to try shift the fulcrum of our current relations with Bibi from settlements — where he thinks he has the upper hand — to ground where there is greater understanding in Israel of the American position and where we can make him uneasy about incurring our displeasure,” Berger wrote on Sept. 19. 2009, days ahead of a speech to President Obama at the United Nations.

Berger wrote, “Ironically, his intransigence over 67 borders may offer us that possibility — to turn his position against him.”

He argued, “Assuming Bibi will accept no formulation that includes 67 borders, it suggests that Bibi is the obstacle to progress and backtracking on his part on an issue that previous Israeli governments have accepted. It begins shifting the discussion from settlements to the more fundamental issue of ultimate territorial outcome.”

Three days later, he wrote, “Going forward, if Bibi continues to be the obstacle, you will need to find the ground from which you can make his politics uneasy.”

 

On that same day, Sept. 22, Obama addressed the United Nations General Assembly, calling for, “a viable, independent Palestinian state with contiguous territory that ends the occupation that began in 1967.”

Clinton emailed Berger that afternoon, asking, “Let me know how you think today played.”

The fact that Clinton was soliciting advice from Berger while secretary of state is part of a pattern of her taking guidance from former loyal soldiers of her husband’s administration with sketchy histories, as she also was in close contact with political operative Sidney Blumenthal — asking for intelligence on Libya as he did consulting work related to the nation.

Berger became infamous in 2003 when, ahead of testimony before the Sept. 11 Commission, he stole highly classified documents from the National Archives and Records Administration by stuffing them in his pants, and destroyed some of them.

Though he initially claimed it was an “honest mistake,” he later pled guilty to removing them intentionally, triggering a $50,000 fine, and 100-hour community service requirement.

That wasn’t Berger’s first brush with the law. In 1997, while serving as national security adviser for Bill Clinton, Berger had to pay a $23,000 penalty for failing to sell stock as directed by the White House, leading to a conflict of interest.

The checkered past didn’t stop Hillary Clinton from making Berger one of her national security advisers in her 2008 campaign, nor, evidently, did it prevent her from being in contact with him at the State Department.

Clinton had a contentious relationship with Netanyahu, famously boasting that she was the administration’s “designated yeller” at the Israeli prime minister.

In May 2011, Obama caused an uproar when he called for a two-state solution based borders that existed before Israel’s victory in the 1967 Six Day War. Israel considers those borders indefensible, because they are as narrow as nine miles.

 

Obama’s Conference Call Gathering his Armies for Iran Deal

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Several names and organizations you may know, but Barack Obama and his anti-Israel pro-Iran keeps them close and calls on them often.

Some key items first however.

In part from IranWatch: While Iran’s ballistic missile capabilities were not considered a core issue in the nuclear talks, the language of the new U.N. resolution and the terms of the JCPOA have consequences for the future of Iran’s ballistic missile program:

  • The U.N. resolution removes the existing ban on Iranian activity related to nuclear-capable ballistic missiles, including launches.
  • The U.N. restrictions on sales of missile technology to Iran are extended for up-to eight years, but missile imports will be less strictly controlled than nuclear imports, relying primarily on reporting from Iran and due diligence by its suppliers.
  • The agreement does not appear to allow the “snapback” of sanctions in response to illicit missile procurement.
  • Sanctions will be lifted early next year on several banks that have facilitated illicit missile-related transactions in the past.

Iran’s efforts to advance its nuclear-capable ballistic missile program – through test launches, production, and illicit procurement – will be made easier, while attempts to punish or deter Iran’s ballistic missile activity and illicit procurement will be made more difficult.

***

That IAEA side deal discovered by 2 members of Congress that flew to Vienna to meet with the IAEA membership of which Secretary of State John Kerry and National Security Council Advisor Susan Rice both say they have not read but have been briefed on, is found here.

During a hearing of which I personally watched, John Kerry was questioned about going beyond the law to over-ride a Congressional vote, Kerry deferred and replied, you need to ask the President. What??? Well a Democrat from California took notice to the Kerry response.

***

From TWS: Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.), who has been one of the more skeptical Democrats on the agreement, said that Obama appeared ready to ignore Congress, even if lawmakers vote to kill the deal and then marshal the two-thirds majorities to override a White House veto.

“The main meat of what he said is, ‘If Congress overrides my veto, you do not get a U.S. foreign policy that reflects that vote. What you get is you pass this law and I, as president, will do everything possible to go in the other direction,’” Sherman told reporters off the House floor after the meeting.

“He’s with the deal — he’s not with Congress,” Sherman added. “At least to the fullest extent allowed by law, and possibly beyond what’s allowed by law.”

Sherman suggested that Obama could refuse to enforce the law and could actively seek to undermine congressional action in other countries, if Capitol Hill insists on stymieing the plan.  

***

So, the entire Obama regime wants this deal as much or if not more than he did on Obamacare, so a conference call was place today.

Some of the names you know like MoveOn.org, happily and earnestly funded by the spooky dude, George Soros. In a previous post on this blog site, we already know about Global Zero enlisting Hollywood.

But we cannot overlook yet another outfit close to the White House, one known as The Truman Project. Here such elitists include:

Madeleine Albright, General James Cartwright, Congresswoman Tammy Duckworth, now running for U.S. Senate from Illinois, Michele Flournoy, who was on the short list to replace Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel until she turned it down, Leslie Gelb the president of the Council of Foreign Relations, Janet Napolitano, the President of the California University system and former Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, and last but certainly not least, Kamala Harris, Attorney General for California who just gained the temporary restraining order on the group filming those Planned Parenthood videos.

Obama in call to arms: Stop big money from quashing nuke deal

President tells supporters of accord the agreement with Tehran is not ‘the best of bad alternatives but actually a very good deal’

TimesofIsrael:  President Barack Obama rallied supporters of the Iran nuclear deal in a conference call Thursday evening, urging them to make their voices heard in the effort to convince Congress to ratify the agreement.

According to participants in the call, the president warned listeners, which included members of a number of progressive and anti-proliferation organizations, that they were battling $20 million in ads intended to sway Congress against the deal.

White House organizers listed a number of groups whose supporters participated in the conference call, including Americans United for Change and MoveOn.org, and the Truman Project, although there were a number of other organizations participating, including J Street.

In the conversation, Obama repeatedly drew parallels between the current Congressional review of the Iran deal and the run-up to the highly unpopular US involvement in Iraq, saying “some of the same forces that got us into Iraq” were now actively campaigning to quash the controversial deal. Obama told listeners that one of his key goals as president, alongside non-proliferation, was to “end the war in Iraq but also to end the mindset that got us into the war.”

The president talked up the deal itself, arguing that “I am absolutely convinced that this is not just the best in a series of bad alternatives but actually a very good deal that we should be proud of and that achieves critical security objectives not just for the US but for our allies and the world, including Israel.”

But while Obama devoted time to the administration’s talking points, explaining why the deal was effective — and reinforcing his commitment to Israel’s security — his final message was more of a call to arms.

The president told activists to challenge those who oppose the deal by asking what they would have done better or differently, while casting doubt on the motivations of those leading the opposition to his landmark foreign policy initiative.

“Every argument that has been put forth with this deal is inaccurate or presupposes that what we should be doing if we were to negotiate is to get a deal in which Iran forgoes any peaceful ability to get nuclear power,” Obama stated, saying that such a deal only existed “in dreams.”

“There is no expert who suggests that Iran would have agreed to that,” he argued. “In the real world, this is a deal that gets the job done.”

“What you have to say is that Iran would not do that, and the only way to do that effectively is if we were to go to war,” he added.

Obama warned that Congress might be swayed by the “$20 million dollars of advertising paid for by lobbyists” — a monetary figure he repeated throughout the conversation. The figure is identical to the amount that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee was believed to be prepared to devote to its effort to oppose the deal during the period of Congressional review.

J Street recently said that it would up its budget in support of the deal, but the total amount represents less than 20% of AIPAC’s reported budget for opposing it.

Congress is expected to vote in September on either a resolution of approval or disapproval of the nuclear deal. Obama has vowed to veto any disapproval, and the White House must ensure that at least a third of the members of one of the two Houses vote in favor of the deal in order to sustain a presidential veto.

Obama criticized “columnists and former administration officials that were responsible for us getting in the Iraq war and were making these same claims in 2002-2003 with respect to Iraq.”

The same theme was used repeatedly to rally listeners to action.

“You are going to see the same forces that got us into the Iraq war leading us away from an opportunity for a diplomatic solution,” Obama warned again.

He urged the participants to call members of Congress and make their support for the deal known, implying that right now the loudest voices being heard were those who oppose the deal. “One of the frustrations I’ve always had about the Iraq war is everybody got really loud and really active after it was too late,” he said.

Obama noted that unlike in the run-up to the Iraq war, “the advantage is that now we have a president in the oval office who is on your side,” but added a warning: “As big as a bully pulpit as I have, it’s not enough.”

“When you have a bunch of folks who are big check writers to political campaigns, and billionaires who give to super PACS…this opportunity could slip away.”

Hillary Used Several Intel Agencies, Hundreds of Classified Emails

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Hillary Clinton with her lawyer, David Kendall have worked out the details to testify before the House Committee on Benghazi led by Congressman Trey Gowdy.

By Marisa Taylor, Greg Gordon and Anita Kumar

McClatchy Washington Bureau

 Data in Clinton’s ‘secret’ emails came from 5 intelligence agencies 
WASHINGTON

The classified emails stored on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private server contained information from five U.S. intelligence agencies and included material related to the fatal 2012 Benghazi attacks, McClatchy has learned.

Of the five classified emails, the one known to be connected to Benghazi was among 296 emails made public in May by the State Department. Intelligence community officials have determined it was improperly released.

Revelations about the emails have put Clinton in the crosshairs of a broadening inquiry into whether she or her aides mishandled classified information when she used a private server set up at her New York home to conduct official State Department business.

While campaigning for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, Clinton has repeatedly denied she ever sent or received classified information. Two inspectors general have indicated that five emails they have reviewed were not marked classified at the time they were stored on her private server but that the contents were in fact “secret.”

The email issue, however, has distracted from Clinton’s campaign for days and already has hurt her in public opinion polls. Besieged with questions, she has found herself caught in a murky dispute between State Department and intelligence officials over whether emails on her server were classified.

“Even if Secretary Clinton or her aides didn’t run afoul of any criminal provisions, the fact that classified information was identified within the emails is exactly why use of private emails . . . is not supposed to be allowed,” said Bradley Moss, a Washington attorney who specializes in national security matters. “Both she and her team made a serious management mistake that no one should ever repeat.”

The facts are pretty clear. I did not send nor receive anything that was classified at the time. Hillary Clinton at a campaign stop Saturday in Iowa

McClatchy also has determined some details of the five emails that the intelligence community’s inspector general has described as classified and improperly handled.

Intelligence officials who reviewed the five classified emails determined that they included information from five separate intelligence agencies, said a congressional official with knowledge of the matter.

The Benghazi email made public contained information from the National Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, a spy agency that maps and tracks satellite imagery, according to the official, who asked to remain anonymous because of the sensitivity of the matter.

The other four classified emails contained information from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the CIA, the official said.

The Office of the Intelligence Community Inspector General did not respond to questions about the matter. The five agencies either referred questions about it to the inspector general’s office or declined to comment.

The intelligence community inspector general only looked at a sample of 40 emails, even though a total of 30,000 emails were turned over to the State Department by Clinton.

Failure to observe any of the requirements for marking or safeguarding (classified information) would be in a category known as a security violation. John Fitzpatrick, director of the Information Security Oversight Office at the National Archives

In documents that were publicly released, Intelligence Community Inspector General I. Charles McCullough III said State Department officials had warned that there were “potentially hundreds of classified emails” on Clinton’s private server.

Clinton’s campaign did not respond to requests for comment. Clinton has maintained she used a personal email account as a “matter of convenience” and has denied she emailed any classified material.

“The facts are pretty clear,” Clinton said at a campaign stop Saturday in Iowa. “I did not send nor receive anything that was classified at the time.”

Clinton said she had “no idea” which emails the inspector general had singled out.

The State Department so far has refused to grant the intelligence community inspector general access to the entire batch of emails on jurisdictional grounds. The inspector general has authority to audit and investigate matters related to 17 intelligence community agencies, including a State Department intelligence unit.

On June 25, McCullough notified members of Congress that he understood that Clinton’s attorney, David Kendall, possessed the more than 30,000 Clinton emails on a computer thumb drive.

In a July 24 letter to FBI Director James Comey, Republican Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa expressed concern about “a compromise of national security information” because of Kendall’s possession of the thumb drive. He called on Comey to explain what steps the FBI had taken to secure the information.

Even if Secretary Clinton or her aides didn’t run afoul of any criminal provisions, the fact that classified information was identified within the emails is exactly why use of private emails . . . is not supposed to be allowed. Bradley Moss, a Washington attorney who specializes in national security matters

“This raises very serious questions and concerns if a private citizen is somehow retaining classified information,” wrote Grassley, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee.

Kendall did not respond to phone and email messages. The FBI and the Justice Department declined to say whether security officials had recovered the device or had arranged for its secure storage.

John Fitzpatrick, the official responsible for overseeing the government’s security classification system, told McClatchy that during the review of four years of Clinton’s State Department emails it became clear that intelligence agencies were concerned State Department officials were not appropriately protecting classified information in screening documents for public release.

State Department officials routinely gather and report diplomatic information that “in an intelligence context could be read very differently,” said Fitzpatrick, the director of the Information Security Oversight Office at the National Archives.

Government employees with access to classified information are trained to identify classified information, Fitzpatrick said.

“The requirement to mark is so that you know it when you see it,” he said. “Failure to observe any of the requirements for marking or safeguarding would be in a category known as a security violation.”

Failing to properly mark information as classified would not necessarily result in criminal charges, he said.

“But there can be consequences for holders of security clearances,” Fitzpatrick said. “If they fail to safeguard the information, once or as part of a pattern, they can be administratively reprimanded” or retrained.

According to a congressional official, the classified emails contained information from the National Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the CIA.

Secretary of State John Kerry and State Department Inspector General Steve Linick will meet this week to talk about the issue, White House spokesman Eric Schultz said Wednesday.

“Secretary Kerry wants to get to the bottom of this, hear what the concerns are and then figure out if they need to take any action,” Schultz said. “So, I think that’s the right step and we support him doing so.”

The White House has not said that Clinton did not follow rules, but it has repeatedly said that “very specific guidance has been given to agencies all across the government, which is specifically that employees in the Obama administration should use their official email accounts when they’re conducting official government business.”

The House Select Committee on Benghazi subpoenaed the emails while asking Clinton to voluntarily turn over her personal email server to a “neutral, detached and independent” third party for “immediate inspection and review,” perhaps the State Department’s inspector general.

Clinton’s attorney told the committee that Clinton permanently deleted all the emails from the server – apparently after she was asked by the State Department to turn them over. Clinton has refused to hand over the server.

The State Department has begun to release her emails in response to a public records lawsuit, though four of the emails containing classified information were among those that have not yet been released. The next batch is due to be released Friday. Clinton has agreed to testify about her email arrangements on Oct. 22 before the committee investigating Benghazi.

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/article29519419.html#storylink=cpy