Hillary Clinton’s continually evolving defense of her apparent mishandling of classified information is starting to sound a lot like a running gag from Get Smart, the Sixties spy sitcom. Trapped in life-or-death situations at the hands of his archenemies, Agent Maxwell Smart would always seek to bluff his way out of trouble. When Mr. Big wouldn’t budge, Agent Smart moved on to the next prevarication until he found something that might stick:
Maxwell Smart: I happen to know that at this very minute seven Coast Guard cutters are converging on this boat. Would you believe it? Seven.
Mr. Big: I find that pretty hard to believe.
Maxwell Smart: Would you believe six?
Mr. Big: I don’t think so.
Maxwell Smart: How about two cops in a rowboat?
Hillary Clinton is trying the same gag, without the benefit of Don Adams’s comic timing. In a March 2015 press conference at the United Nations — her first public comments after news broke of her exclusive use of a private e-mail server to conduct official business — the former secretary of state drew a line in the sand, insisting categorically that “there is no classified material” on her home-brewed server. That story quickly took on water. The Department of Justice began withholding classified material from public releases of Mrs. Clinton’s e-mails — to date, more than 1,500 e-mails have been withheld as classified, with more to come. And inspectors general for both the intelligence community and the State Department revealed that even a small sample of the Clinton e-mails they reviewed contained information classified as top secret. The State Department confirmed late last week that nearly two dozen of her e-mails were so sensitive that they would be withheld in their entirety from public disclosure.