October 19, 2016–Games were played with the Clinton emails, just not the ones you think. Or perhaps, just the ones you thought. From the beginning of the Clinton email saga you read in this space that this was a scam about secrecy, and new evidence for the bankruptcy of the secrecy system. Now we have the proof. The FBI has released texts of interviews it conducted during its investigation of the email scandal. In combination with the Bureau’s own final report, and the parallel inquiries of journalists, we can now assemble a picture of the handling of one of Hillary’s typical emails.

Under instructions to release material handled on Mrs. Clinton’s private email server the State Department reviewed swathes of these for opening to the public. As part of the government’s standard approach in matters of secrecy, the messages were circulated to other agencies for their say. The government calls this “equity,” as if agencies can own information–which they cannot, by law. Nevertheless the “equity” arrangement has been used as a major tool to manipulate declassification and secrecy, as it was here.

The State Department had simply intended to release the emails. The Federal Bureau of Investigation objected. It considered that some of these emails ought to be secret. (The first problem with this set up–you’ll also have seen that here before–is that we have FBI deciding after the fact that something should have been secret before, and then claiming the breach of regulations designed to protect secrecy at the inception of a document.)

A senior State Department official, Patrick Kennedy, in charge of the email release project, phoned the FBI, where he spoke to Brian McCauley. This was May 2015 and McCauley was the Bureau official responsible for its foreign operations. The FBI had just lost two slots on the staff of the U.S. embassy in Baghdad–and here is where the story gets muddled. McCauley adverts that he initially asked State to reinstate the Baghdad field agents and offered at his end to help get FBI to back down on its secrecy demand enabling State to move forward. Once he learned the message concerned Benghazi, McCauley relates, all bets were off. On the State Department’s side, Patrick Kennedy has loyally said he thought the message was not secret, though certain redactions might be required for other reasons, and that he knew nothing of any FBI offer of a trade.

The way this story was first reported alleged that it was the State Department that had begged for a trade–with the implication it sought in that way to shield Hillary Clinton.

So is the game played. Secrecy is not wielded simply for the protection of national security, it is used as bludgeon to obtain all manner of interagency “cooperation.” The losers are the American people, who are not only robbed of the true record of their government’s actions, but are subjected to the arbitrary measures of a system in which policy is forged partly by barter.

You have already read here (for example, “Hillary’s Emails: Bursting the Secrecy Bubble,” August 22, 2015) that the email controversy really shows the need to reform the laws governing secret information, which have made it impossible to function as a senior official without breaking them. Here’s a good illustration of why–an act taken in the open at time x is suddenly recast as secret at time y–and then the charge of breach of secrecy is used to extract some other action. Add to this the fact that investigation of the breach is in the purview of the FBI and you have the makings of a completely vicious circle.

It is tragic that this whole “Hillary Emails” thing has been made into an election issue in a campaign for the presidency of the United States. The emails controversy has been manipulated from beginning to end, is based on a very ephemeral set of acts pumped up by persons with other agendas, and has even been exploited by foreign governments to meddle in American politics. Do not make an issue of the emails without carefully considering the full issue.