The State Department was given a voice in the intensity and timing of CIA drone strikes in Pakistan, after then-Ambassador Cameron Munter reportedly opposed certain covert operations that occurred during especially sensitive points in the U.S.-Pakistani bilateral relationship, or when domestic opposition to the strikes were at their highest. As he later described this process: "I have a yellow card," Munter recalled, describing the new policy. "I can say 'no.' That 'no' goes back to the CIA director. Then he has to go to Hillary. If Hillary says 'no,' he can still do it, but he has to explain the next day in writing why."
Entous and Barrett's, in the WSJ reporting, includes this critical passage:
"With the compromise, State Department-CIA tensions began to subside. Only once or twice during Mrs. Clinton's tenure at State did U.S. diplomats object to a planned CIA strike, according to congressional and law-enforcement officials familiar with the emails."
During Clinton's tenure between January 2009 and February 2013, the CIA conducted 294 drone strikes that killed 2,192 people, 226 of whom were civilians. In other words, of the 294 CIA drone strikes in Pakistan, Clinton's State Department objected to fewer than one-percent of them"
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Some conclude that Clinton, therefore, made her peace with the CIA overriding the State Department. I conclude that she was powerless to control the CIA and her failed attempts cost her the Presidency. Today, as in the past, the CIA is under no one's control but their own. And anyone who even tries to challenge their independence will be punished. The Deep State did not so much manipulate the 2016 election to elect Trump as to punish Clinton and send a message not to even try to mess with the CIA.
The Clinton email scandal was less about "mishandling emails or "DNC efforts to hurt the Sanders' bid" but rather to send a powerful message about trying to exercise even the smallest oversight over the CIA. One of the leading Grand Inquisitors of the Benghazi hearings is now head of the CIA and free to conduct any drone wars he wishes. The investigation, in the first place, was, arguably, punishment for the crime of requiring the CIA to justify their drone strikes, their autonomous control of a private war machine. It is not just trying to control the CIA but asking them to explain their actions which is prohibited.
Under Trump, they no longer have to explain or justify; they are free to wage wars and Trump has told them "I am 110% behind the CIA." Shouldn't he be in front of them?
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