Others say

Voters still waiting

Was Hillary Clinton, as secretary of state, careless with classified information that could bring harm to intelligence sources or otherwise benefit U.S. adversaries, or is she being slammed by her partisan opponents over action that was not criminal and may have simply reflected a lapse in judgment? The fog was only deepened by the recent announcement that "top secret" information was found in seven email chains.

Clinton should not have stored her official business on a private computer server based in her home. It was faulty thinking, perhaps borne of her desire to keep control over the communications and long experience in the political trenches. She has since turned everything over to the State Department for screening and release. The emails in question--many of them sent to her by others--came from the unclassified systems of the government, and, we are told, did not have any markings on them that identified them as classified. So it does not seem that she knowingly or willfully mishandled anything classified. The question of intent here is crucial.

This casts a shadow over Clinton's presidential candidacy. The FBI may be attempting to determine if any foreign hackers were able to penetrate the server, which is an important question. We think it would be wrong to prejudge or interfere with this investigation. But voters deserve to know as soon as possible whether this was a lapse of judgment or something worse. They deserve to be told whether there is any reason to suspect criminal behavior. In the name of fairness, we urge FBI Director James B. Comey to do everything possible to answer the question sooner rather than later. If there was no criminal behavior, allowing suspicions to linger through a campaign year would be wrong.

Editorial on 02/10/2016

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