Moving on? ABC's Good Morning America on Friday skipped the latest bombshell revelation in Hillary Clinton's e-mail scandal, the news that her communications on a private server included talk about top secret CIA drones. The program instead hyped irrelevant stories throughout the two hour program. NBC's Today mentioned the Associated Press report on the topic, but during a larger segment on whether Al Gore would run. CBS This Morning was the only show to devote a full report.
GMA is a notoriously superficial show. The entire last half hour of the "news" program was devoted to a rock concert. But even in the 7am hour, where serious stories are supposed to air, the show devoted over two and a half minutes to Nick Kyrgios, the "new bad boy of tennis."
In contrast, CBS This Morning co-host Christine Johnson explained, "A report says an e-mail discussing secret CIA drones was sent through Hillary Clinton's private, unsecured server." Nancy Cordes added, "That drone program discussed in the e-mails was widely known, but because it was a CIA operation, intelligence officials say that those e-mails should have been considered classified." She described it as "an ongoing debate about just how sensitive the information in those e-mails was."
Cordes detailed the state of Clinton's server:
NANCY CORDES: The FBI picked up Clinton's server, Wednesday. Not from her Chappaqua, New York, home but from a data center in New Jersey. A lawyer for the IT firm that manages the Clintons' e-mail system told CBS News that "The Clintons decided to upgrade their system sometime after Clinton left the State Department in 2013," and that "The old server is now blank and likely does not contain usable information."
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DAN ACKERMAN (Senior editor at CNET): : If you write something on a chalkboard and erase it, you can still kind of see the outline and that's sort of like deleting a file. Then, if you write over it again, it's harder to see. The more times you write over it and erase it and write over it, eventually you'll never be able to decipher what the original data was.
Over on the Today show, Kristen Welker framed the newest details around whether or not Al Gore might run: "The buzz about Al Gore comes as the AP reports two of the e-mails on Hillary Clinton's private server, quote, 'include a discussion of a news article detailing a U.S. drone operation' and one that could point back to classified material in an improper manner."
She also made sure to highlight a statement of denial from a Clinton spokesperson.
On Thursday, GMA hosts skipped the news that Clinton wanted a how-to book on deleting e-mails. ABC also skipped the controversy on Thursday's World News.
A transcript of the August 14 CBS This Morning segment is below:
CHRISTINE JOHNSON: Well, a report says an e-mail discussing secret CIA drones was sent through Hillary Clinton's private, unsecured server. The Associated Press says it was one of two messages with top-secret information sent to Clinton while she was Secretary of State. The FBI took possession of that server on Wednesday. Nancy Cordes is in Washington where the e-mail controversy is stirring up the presidential race. Nancy, good morning.
NANCY CORDES: Good morning. That drone program discussed in the e-mails was widely known, but because it was a CIA operation, intelligence officials say that those e-mails should have been considered classified. It's part of an ongoing debate about just how sensitive the information in those e-mails was. For Republicans, Clinton's e-mail problems went from attack line to punch line, Thursday.
TED CRUZ: The problem was the debate invitation was e-mailed to Hillary. [ Laughter ]
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Mr. Huckabee --
CORDES: At the Iowa state fair, Mike Huckabee joked about her new address.
MIKE HUCKABEE: Hrc@youreintrouble.com.
CORDES: Clinton's Democratic opponents, like former Maryland Governor O'Malley, have tried to tread lightly.
MARTIN O'MALLEY: All of the stuff about the e-mail server and top-secret e-mails and all of this -- these are not the ideas that excite the electorate.
CORDES: California Senator Dianne Feinstein came to Clinton's defense, Thursday. The top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee put out a statement saying, "As someone who regularly reviews classified material, I can say that those documents are always clearly marked as containing classified information. The e-mails identified in Clinton's situation did not contain these markings." The FBI picked up Clinton's server, Wednesday. Not from her Chappaqua, New York, home but from a data center in New Jersey. A lawyer for the IT firm that manages the Clintons' e-mail system told CBS News that "The Clintons decided to upgrade their system sometime after Clinton left the State Department in 2013," and that "The old server is now blank and likely does not contain usable information."
DAN ACKERMAN: If you want to permanently say you've deleted something, that's very hard to do.
CORDES: Dan Ackerman is senior editor at the tech website CNET. He says to truly wipe a server clean, the material needs to be intentionally overwritten multiple times.
ACKERMAN: If you write something on a chalkboard and erase it, you can still kind of see the outline and that's sort of like deleting a file. Then, if you write over it again, it's harder to see. The more times you write over it and erase it and write over it, eventually you'll never be able to decipher what the original data was.
CORDES: The FBI hasn't said what it plans to do with the server. The intelligence community's inspector general referred the matter to them in the first place because he was concerned about the security of material that might be on it. So, it's possible, Gayle, that the FBI is more interested in safeguarding the server than in examining it.
