So...is the absence of classified evidence itself a classified matter?

[Tommy_Carcetti]

Because if someone asks Yates or Comey or someone "in the know" whether or not there is any evidence to link Donald Trump and/or associates to Russian hacking, and she answers she can't answer because it's classified....does that suggest "yes" without saying "yes"?

Could they ethically/legally answer "no" without violating classification rules?

[dchill]

1. Hmm. I have to admit that I never thought of that.

[onecaliberal]

2. She said that answer in and of itself didn't mean the answer was affirmative.

[Nevernose]

3. Hypothetically I may have had a friend work at the CIA

And their method of answering my obnoxious, intrusive questions was to either say "no" outright, or, in the case of a yes or probably or you're on the right track, would say "I can neither confirm nor deny that."

Maybe.

[PoliticAverse]

4. If you are James Clapper you can say no (even when the answer is yes). n/t

[Hortensis]

5. Good question, and my best guess would be yes.

Confirmed absence would be definitive information in a lot of situations, practically all to various degrees, and therefore potentially valuable to a lot of people.

[MedusaX]

6. Significance of any piece of evidence is subject to change over the course of the investigation

evidentiary material exists
It remains Classified until such time as it is introduced into to evidence in a court procedure or is officially de-classified for whatever reason.

The evidentiary materials that may have been initially thought only to represent reasonable/legally permissible acts...

May have taken on a new significance, relative to illegal acts, as additional evidentiary material was obtained and reviewed....


Until such time as a final ruling has been made, as to the criminality of the acts evidenced by those materials, it is impossible to confirm or deny that the materials can be conclusively deemed sufficiently indicative of any given criminal act.

[Wounded Bear]

7. In an ongoing investigation, it probably is...

there are some questions that kind of need to be un-asked. Anything that might lead to any conclusion about the direction or the potential success of an investigation should be off limits.