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THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
Friday, October 2, 2015 | A11
OPINION
A Clinton Email Scandal Checklist
Hillary Clinton
hopes you are
busy. Hillary
Clinton hopes
you are confused. Hillary
POTOMAC Clinton hopes
the endless
WATCH
stories about
By Kimberley
her
private
Strassel
email server—
and her endless, fabulist explanations—will
make your head hurt, make
your eyes cross, make you give
up trying to figure it out.
All you really need to know
at this point is this: Pretty
much every claim Mrs. Clinton
made at her initial March news
conference, and since then, is
false. In the spirit of keeping it
simple, here’s the Complete
Busy Person’s Guide to the Clinton Email Scandal. Stick it on
the fridge.
Why she kept a private
server.
Clinton: It was for “convenience.” “I thought it would be
easier to carry just one device
for my work and for my personal emails instead of two.”
Truth: Mrs. Clinton’s team
acknowledged in July that she
traveled with both a BlackBerry
and an iPad while secretary of
state, and that she had her private email set up on both.
Why she finally gave her
emails to the State Department.
Clinton: “What happened . . .
is that the State Department
sent a letter to former secretaries of state, not just to me, asking for some assistance in providing any work-related emails
that might be on the personal
email.” In other words, this was
a routine records request.
Truth: In late September,
State Department spokesman
John Kirby said that “in the
process of responding to [Congress’s Benghazi investigation], State Department officials recognized that it had
access to relatively few email
records from former Secretary
Clinton.” So they contacted her
“during the summer of 2014 to
learn more about her email use
and the status of emails in that
account.” Only then did the
department realize that it was
also missing emails from other
secretaries. It didn’t contact
them until October 2014.
What she turned over.
Clinton: “I . . . provided all
my emails that could possibly
be work-related.”
Truth: In June Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal turned
over to Congress his own store
of Clinton correspondence,
which included emails she
hadn’t provided to the State Department. Last week the government found by its own
means emails she had sent to
Gen. David Petraeus, which Mrs.
Clinton also hadn’t surrendered.
Her campaign now admits that
there is a two-month gap from
the beginning of her tenure as
secretary of state, when she
was using her private email address but not her personal
server. All the emails from that
time period are missing, and
the Clinton team says it has no
idea where they are.
What is in State Department
records.
Clinton: “It was my practice
to communicate with State
Department and other govern-
ment officials on their .gov accounts so those emails would
be automatically saved in the
State Department system to
meet record-keeping requirements.”
Truth: Mrs. Clinton’s top
aides, including her chief of
staff, Cheryl Mills, and Huma
Abedin, had private email
addresses, which she used to
correspond with them. Ms.
Abedin’s email was also housed
on the Clinton server. The State
Department release on Wednesday of 6,300 pages of Clinton
It’s a challenge to
keep track of all the
dodges and untruths.
correspondence features one
email in which she specifically
asks an aide, not Ms. Abedin,
for her Gmail address. In
another 2011 email, an aide
wrote to Mrs. Clinton expressing concern about the State
Department’s outdated technology and just how many employees use private email: “NO ONE
uses a State-issued laptop and
even high officials routinely end
up using their home email accounts to be able to get their
work done quickly.” Mrs. Clinton—from her private email—
agrees that it is a problem.
Classified information.
Clinton: “There is no classified material” on the private
server.
Truth: The latest State Department document dump now
brings to more than 400 the
number of Clinton emails that
contain classified information.
They touch on everything from
spy satellites, to drone strikes
to Iranian nuclear discussions.
The Clinton team contends
that these emails were not
stamped classified until after
the fact. But intelligence experts note many were “born”
classified—that is, the nature
of the information required
that they be handled as classified from the start.
Security.
Clinton: The server “had
numerous safeguards. It was
on property guarded by the
Secret Service. And there were
no security breaches.”
Truth: The Clinton emails
released this week show that
her server was attacked at least
five times by hackers linked to
Russia. It is unclear whether
she clicked on any email attachments and put her account
at risk. Mrs. Clinton’s server
meanwhile sat for many months
in a private data center in New
Jersey, accessible to people who
lacked security clearances.
Thumb-drive copies of her
email were also unsecured for
months, while in the possession
of her lawyer, David Kendall.
And classified email she sent to
aides on their private accounts
is now sitting on Google and
AOL servers.
Transparency.
Clinton (on NBC’s “Meet the
Press” Sept. 27): “I think I
have done all that I can . . . to
be as transparent as possible.”
Truth: Give her marks for
this one. Mrs. Clinton is undoubtedly being as transparent
as Mrs. Clinton can possibly be.
Write to [email protected].
Saving Christians From ISIS Persecution
HOUSES OF In 1975, as key, is close to the Syrian- there is a limited window for Hultgren, one of the bill’s coWORSHIP
d e s p e r a t e Turkey border,” he says, sug- rescue. Unlike the thousands sponsors. Mr. Arabo says the
By Chloé
Valdary
Vietnamese
sought to escape Communist rule,
the U.S. embarked on what
remains one of the greatest
humanitarian rescue missions
in history. Over the span of
several weeks, Operation Frequent Wind, Operation Babylift and other missions by air
or on sea saved and resettled
tens of thousands of Vietnamese in the U.S., where they
would become thriving American citizens.
Now another desperate
population needs rescuing:
persecuted Christians in the
Middle East. Could there be
an Operation Frequent Wind
for them?
Mark Arabo thinks so. He is
a Chaldean-American and the
founder of the Minority Humanitarian Foundation, a nonprofit organization whose
mission is to get Iraqi Christians out before it’s too late.
“There is historical precedent
for this,” he says from his
base in San Diego. “President
Ford airlifted thousands during the Vietnam War and we
need to do the same.”
An operation of this size
would require extensive logistical planning, but Benjamin
Weinthal, a research fellow
for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, says
Operation Frequent Wind is
repeatable. “Incirlik, the U.S.
air base near Adana in Tur-
gesting that U.S.-led specialoperation teams could stage a
mission in partnership with
European countries. “There
are service personnel and
planes to accomplish a rescue
operation for persecuted
Christians.”
Since the rise of Islamic
State, known as ISIS, about
125,000 Christians have fled
the country. After ISIS took
Mosul in June 2014, the city’s
Christians flocked to Erbil,
the Kurdish capital. In Syria,
once home to nearly two million Christians, at least
500,000 have been displaced
during four years of war. It is
ISIS policy to kidnap and rape
Christian women and girls.
The terrorist group has razed
Christian sites, including
monasteries dating to the
fifth century. Last October the
ISIS magazine Dabiq referred
to Christians as “crusaders”
and vowed to kill “every Crusader possible.”
That should remind Western policy makers: Christians
are not random victims,
caught in the maw of Mideast
strife. They are targets of
genocide, much like the Jews
during World War II. This
entitles them to broad protection under the 1951 U.N. Genocide Convention, to which the
U.S. is a signatory.
It is also worth noting that
because Christians in Iraq and
Syria are facing genocide—as
opposed to displacement—
of refugees pouring into Europe, who are mostly escaping
the violence driven by the sectarian war in Syria, Christians
are facing a targeted campaign of annihilation. The U.S.
ought to take that distinction
into consideration when prioritizing the resettlement of the
additional 30,000 refugees the
country is slated to absorb
over the next two years.
A 1975 U.S. precedent:
The rescue of South
Vietnamese from
Communist rule.
lack of movement illustrates
“bureaucratic negligence and
indifference” on the part of
the administration. “The State
Department has already indicated their unwillingness to
reinstate processing for religious minorities.”
Meanwhile, Mr. Arabo is essentially running an underground railroad to help Christians escape. “We are bringing
them to America, Australia
and France,” he said. “In the
U.S. alone, we have identified
70,000 Christians who have
been displaced and have
matched them with 70,000
people willing to bring them
in.” But that depends on the
administration’s willingness
to allow them to enter.
In January 1944, two years
after the Nazis settled on the
“Final Solution” at the Wannsee
conference, Franklin D. Roosevelt established a War Refugee
Board “to forestall the plan of
the Nazis to exterminate all
the Jews and other persecuted minorities of Europe.”
Though the board helped
rescue some 200,000 people,
it arrived too late—by this
time, more than a million Jews
had perished in Auschwitz.
With another religious minority facing a similarly grim
fate, Congress and the administration don’t have another
moment to waste.
Earlier this year, Rep. Juan
Vargas, a California Democrat,
introduced House Resolution
1568, the “Protecting Religious Minorities Persecuted
by ISIS Act of 2015.” The act’s
modest goal is to require the
secretary of state to “report
to Congress a plan to expedite
the processing of refugee
admissions applications” for
religious minorities threatened with extinction by ISIS.
The bill hasn’t moved in
Congress, partly due to inattention but also because the
Obama administration seems
to want nothing to do with it.
“I haven’t heard anything
from the administration on
moving this bill forward,”
Ms. Valdary is a Robert L.
says Illinois Republican Randy Bartley Fellow at the Journal.
We’re a Long Way From ‘Peak Car’
By Mark Mills
M
any environmentalists
hope, and oil producers worry, that we’re
entering a post-car era spearheaded by tech-savvy, bikepath-loving, urban-dwelling,
Uber-using millennials—leaving behind generations of
automobile owners whose
thirst for gasoline seemed limitless.
“Millennials have been reluctant to buy items such as cars,”
a Goldman Sachs analysis concludes, turning to “what’s being
called a ‘sharing economy.’ ”
David Metz, former chief scientist at England’s Department of
Transport, claims that the
growth of Uber and its competitors guarantees a decline in
automobile and fuel use.
Thomas Frey, the DaVinci Institute senior futurist, says that
“wealthy economies have already hit peak car.”
The idea may seem plausible given recent history: tepid
new-car sales, fewer miles
driven per capita and shrink-
ing gasoline use. In reality, it’s
poppycock: The car habits of
young adults ages 18-33 simply reflected a lack of jobs and
money.
Now J.D. Power finds that
millennials are the fastest
growing class of car buyers.
Edmunds reports that millennials lease luxury brands at a
Millennials are moving
to the suburbs. Guess
how they’re going to
be getting around?
higher rate than average. Nielsen reports millennials are
40% more likely than average
to buy a vehicle over the coming year. Tesla-inspired hype
aside, overall electric-car sales
are down 20% this year, with
SUV sales up 15%.
Urban dwellers? The latest
Census reveals a net migration of millennials from the
city to the car-centric suburbs
is already under way. And it’s
just starting: A survey sponsored by the National Association of Home Builders finds
66% of those born since 1977
say they plan to live in a single-family suburban home.
Peak driving? Federal Highway Administration data show
40 billion more total miles
driven in the first half of 2015,
compared with the last peak
set in the same period in
2007. Gasoline demand in
2015 is rising too, soon to
blow past the previous record
of 9.2 million barrels a day,
also set in 2007. Imagine what
happens when robust economic growth resumes.
Consider a related Silicon
Valley trope that self-driving
vehicles promise fewer cars or
less driving. One Rocky Mountain Institute analyst thinks
“if implemented correctly”
they could be used to increase
public transit use. Lawrence
Berkeley Lab researchers implausibly posit self-driving
cars are “potentially disruptive,” provided they’re used
mainly as taxis, and involve
fewer solo rides.
But whether a human or an
algorithm is driving, it’s still a
car. One disruptive change
that could arise from selfdriving cars is that the growing elderly population, and
others infirm or isolated, will
be able to continue owning
cars and enjoying the freedom
and mobility they bring. And
cool tech features may, if anything, make cars more attractive, not less, to tech-savvy
millennials.
For all their iconoclasm,
the baby boomers eventually
got married, moved to the
suburbs and bought houses,
SUVs and minivans for their
double-car garages. Generation Y is going down the same
road. The forecasts of peak
car look to be about as accurate as those of peak oil.
Mr. Mills is a Manhattan
Institute senior fellow and a
faculty fellow at Northwestern
University’s McCormick School
of Engineering.
BOOKSHELF | By George Melloan
Rewriting the
Economic Rules
Saving Capitalism
By Robert B. Reich
(Knopf, 279 pages, $26.95)
R
obert B. Reich no doubt intends to shock with his
declaration that the “free market is a myth.” Few
ideas “have more profoundly poisoned the minds of
more people than the notion of a ‘free market’ existing
somewhere in the universe, into which government
‘intrudes,’ ” writes the Berkeley professor, former labor
secretary and author of 14 books.
Mr. Reich has no problem with regulation. He’s unhappy
because he thinks that the wrong people have written the
rules, namely the rich and powerful. His populist tome will
probably find sympathetic readers in this era of widespread
and ill-defined discontent, judging from the outlandish poll
rankings of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders.
In “Saving Capitalism” we
learn that humans no longer
live in their natural state,
where only the fittest survive.
That news isn’t especially
fresh. The federal government
alone has 21 agencies and 15
departments that intervene in
markets, not counting state and
local interventions. Legal precedents, rules and regulations fill
thousands of law-book pages.
The author cites what he calls
the “five building blocks” of
capitalism: property, monopoly,
contract, bankruptcy and enforcement. Decisions must be made about each,
he writes. Take property: Some things we aren’t allowed to
own, like slaves. Or take contracts: Buying or selling “sex,
babies and votes” are frowned upon. Enforcement tries to
ensure than no one cheats. “These decisions don’t ‘intrude’
on the free market,” Mr. Reich writes. “They constitute the
free market. Without them there is no market.” Well, yes.
The “free market” is constrained by rules, many of which
are widely accepted and some of which facilitate the
market’s own smooth functioning. But let’s get to the point.
The point, for Mr. Reich, is a familiar one: We are ruled
by big business. The granule of truth in that claim has
sustained progressive politics for decades, harking back to
the early 20th century, when muckraking journalists and
Teddy Roosevelt were beating up on Standard Oil. It’s true
that big corporations often seek government interventions
that offer them protection from competitors. They don’t
have armies of Washington lobbyists for nothing.
Mr. Reich himself is not above protectionism. He boasts
that as labor secretary he opposed President Clinton’s Nafta
free-trade agreement with Canada and Mexico. Protectionism is a seamy side of corporate—and unionist—behavior.
But free-trade forces have more often won than lost.
America’s and the world’s markets are still free enough to
require businesses to compete vigorously for consumer
favor. To that end, Google, Apple, Amazon, Toyota, Samsung
et al. strive for productive and distributional efficiency.
The author says it’s insidious that farmers are
buying genetically modified seeds. Attacking
innovation is a strange way to save capitalism.
The author doesn’t acknowledge this visible truth. Instead,
he finds it insidious, for example, that farmers are snapping up
Monsanto’s genetically modified seeds because the seeds’
resistance to pests and diseases increases crop yields. To his
credit, he doesn’t take the food-faddist line that GMOs are
unsafe (which they aren’t). His worry seems to be that
Monsanto is making too much money. Attacking technological
innovation is a strange way to go about saving capitalism.
Mr. Reich admires populist author Thomas Piketty, who
proposes to save capitalism from itself by taxing capital out
of existence, thereby creating a truly egalitarian society. He
calls the Frenchman’s finding that capitalism steadily widens
inequality a “powerful thesis,” although he nowhere contends
with the many critiques of Mr. Piketty’s dodgy numbers supposedly backing his claim that the return on capital exceeds
economic growth. Mr. Reich asserts that U.S. median family
income has been stagnant for over a decade because of the
decline in private-sector union membership, although he
never contends with the effects of unions on job creation or
mobility or on pro-growth economic dynamism.
But back to “free” markets. Markets always exist. The
old Soviet Union tried to suppress them but couldn’t, since
the managers of state enterprises merely traded among
themselves, illegally, to keep the factories running. The
question about markets, always, is “how free?” There is
ample evidence that the freest countries are the richest.
The U.S. has been sliding down the personal and economic
freedom rankings in recent years. The latest index, compiled
by the Cato and Fraser institutes in cooperation with
Germany’s Liberales Institut, shows that 19 other nations are
freer than the United States. In 2008, there were only 16.
Perhaps to counter the suggestion that President Obama had
anything to do with this relative decline, Mr. Reich argues
that Mr. Obama has “presided over one of the most probusiness administrations in American history,” enacting a
“health care law that enriched insurance and pharmaceutical
companies.” Some insurers and drug makers indeed
supported ObamaCare, only to suffer buyer’s remorse, but
don’t ask the energy industry, for example, what it thinks
about Mr. Obama’s attitudes toward business.
Mr. Reich believes that the fault line in American politics
will shift from Republican vs. Democrat to anti-establishment
vs. establishment. Messrs. Trump and Sanders might agree.
What are Mr. Reich’s own anti-establishment proposals for
the salvation of capitalism? Provide everyone, starting at
age 18, with a minimum income. Award every child at birth
a portfolio of stocks and bonds. Give everyone a share in
intellectual property. That would be nice. But there’s always
that nagging question: Who’s going to pay for it?
Mr. Melloan, a former columnist and deputy editor of
the Journal editorial page, is writing a book on the Great
Depression, to be published by Simon & Schuster.
In BOOKS this weekend
FALL READING: Speaking dragon • Cursed kings • Bond’s
songs • Chicago’s stockyards • Meeting your corpse • The
lost Kennedy • Living with ‘Lear’ • David’s story • A punk
poet • The Duke of surfing • Winnie the Pooh • & more