“The Russians Are Not Our Friends”*

I guess I look at things differently or have a longer memory. Two weeks after the election it is all the Russian fault that Hillary lost and we ought to have an independent investigation. Two weeks before the election it was all Hillary’s fault for going off the reservation and creating her own independant email server. But of course, nothing critical was leaked and the FBI was mistaken about 30,000 classified emails. You can’t have it both ways.

The first thing a rookie police officer learns when investigating a traffic accident is that the accident begins with the first harmful event. The hard part comes in identifying the harmful event and where it occurred. Two examples: two cars meet head on on a two lane state highway. One is obviously in the oncoming lane of traffic when the collision occurred. To the uninitiated, the harmful event is where the two bumpers met. An experienced investigator will look for and probably find tire scuff marks that will set him off on a journey of a quarter mile, to the real first harmful event. That is when the vehicle ran off the right shoulder and the driver didn’t react or overreacted and the vehicle came back onto the roadway, not under control, crossed lanes of traffic resulting in the head on collision. It is commonly accepted that in an intersection collision the vehicle that failed to yield the right of way is the vehicle at fault. Not so fast. If the terrain or surrounding urban area creates view obstructions, an experienced investigator first has to eliminate the obstructions as the cause of the accident. If a building or dip in the road would prevent a driver from seeing an oncoming vehicle, the speed of the oncoming vehicle becomes a factor. The harmful event may not be the failure to yield right of way, but the excessive speed of the oncoming vehicle.

There are two reasons to classify information. One is to protect the information, not let the other guy know you have it. The second is protect the system and means of disseminating the information.

An example of the second is during WWII Germany depended upon the Enigma machine to transmit secret orders and battle plans. The Poles reverse engineered the Enigma in 1932 and brought it with them to the British when Poland fell. The machine was improved upon during the war which left gaps in intelligence but the British managed to keep pace. The British regarded the ability to read German Enigma traffic so vital, that when they got word that Coventry, England was to be bombed, they did not react and allowed the city to be destroyed.

It is noted A-clinton-campaign-aides-typo-allowed-hackers-to-access-john-podestas-email-accountthat Russian access to Podsesta’s account was via Hillary’s email. It can be argued that had Hillary used a government email account with a more robust security the phishing attack would never have taken place.

So by all means let’s have hearings, let’s talk about Hillary’s emails again. Mitch McConnell and John Glenn have got it half right, “the Russians are not our friends” *but neither are the democrats.