The determination that no charges will be brought against Hillary Clinton for using a private email server that could have (and probably did) result in compromising highly classified material bothers me on several levels. I and others at the Rocky Flats Plant were required to carefully protect classified information. It was made abundantly clear that carelessness with classified reports could have dire consequences, to include loss of your clearance (and therefore your job) and possible criminal charges. I’ve never believed Ms Clinton’s assertion that she had never sent classified information on her private server and that nothing ever sent was marked classified. We were briefed on what would be classified, and we treated incomplete reports as classified from the moment we began drafting a report. It was deemed “born classified.” I’m confident Ms. Clinton didn’t need a secret or top secret stamp on much of the information to know it was classified and should be treated as such.

On another level, it is easy compare this situation to the FBI raid on Rocky Flats that found nothing alleged in the search warrant. The Justice Department persisted in continuing the investigation with a Grand Jury in a desperate search for why they conducted the raid. They refused to give up and admit they were wrong. They eventually forced Rockwell to plead guilty to crimes that would not have been crimes anywhere else. Almost all of the items in the plea bargain referred to environmental issues that had been reported in detail by the plant well before the raid and, in the words of the plea bargain, had no negative offsite effects. All the raid accomplished was frightening local citizens, but the Justice Department persisted in forcing a guilty plea that helped save their reputations. Apparently Clinton’s reputation was judged to be more important than the reputation of the FBI.

Why did the FBI not find a “Martha Stewart” type of violation in Hillary’s case? Stewart had been accused of insider trading, no evidence was found to support the claim, but she was convicted of lying to federal investigators (or at least giving them conflicting information). Why was Hillary given a pass despite the fact she repeatedly lied? The only logical answer is that Hillary was treated differently because of her political position.

This makes me very sad for the country. The laws are apparently really only for the “Little People.” To paraphrase Orwell’s Animal Farm, we “Little People” have naively believed all people are equal. We now know that some people are more equal than others.