Secretary without honor: Voices

Secretary without honor: Voices
When I hear people say Clinton emails don't matter, I remember a young Marine captain who owned up to his career-ruining mistake.
Apologists for Hillary Clinton’s alleged criminal mishandling of classified documents say that it doesn’t matter, that she really did nothing wrong, or nothing significant.
But the real question is not so much what she did as how she has responded to being found out.
Once during the mid-1960s when I was on active duty in the Marine Corps, I was the air liaison officer for a battalion of Marines aboard 11 ships in the Mediterranean.
As the air officer and a senior captain, I had a rotating responsibility for the nuclear code book, kept in the safe in the operations room of the lead amphibious squadron command ship.
I shared that duty with another captain, a squared away young man, liked by all he commanded and the son of a very high-ranking Marine.
On the day our ships were leaving the Mediterranean, we met the new amphibious squadron near Gibraltar and made preparations to transfer security codes and other sensitive material to the incoming Marine battalion.
The young captain was on duty and went to the operations office to pick up the code book. 
He was alone in the office.
He removed the code book and placed it on the desk while closing the safe. In a rushed moment, he stepped across the passageway to retrieve something he needed from his quarters.
Seconds later, he stepped back into the operations office and found the operations sergeant having just entered, looking down at the code book.
Against all regulations, the code book had been out of the safe and unattended.
It mattered not that it was unattended for only seconds, that the ship was 5 miles at sea, or that it was certain no one unauthorized had seen the code.
The captain could have explained this to the operations sergeant. 
He could have told the sergeant that he “would take care of it.” 
He could have hinted that his high-ranking dad could smooth it over.
But the Marine Corps’ values are honor, courage and commitment.
Honor is the bedrock of our character.
The young captain could not ask the sergeant to betray his duty to report the infraction, no matter how small. Instead, the captain simply said, “Let’s go see the colonel....”
Read on and see real honor: