August 2, 2015

Report: Hillary Emails Contained Classified Materials From Five US Intelligence Agencies

Guy Benson

7/31/2015 10:16:00 AM - Guy Benson

Hillary Clinton, in early March:

"I Did Not Email Any Classified Material To Anyone On My Email. There is no classified material."

We recently learned that the above statement was the latest in a series of lies spun by Mrs. Clinton pertaining to her national security-endangering email scheme, which has now been referred to the Justice Department and FBI by two Inspectors General for further investigation. Within a 40 email sample reviewed by the IG offices, fully ten percent of the messages included classified materials -- which were classified at the time, not retroactively, as Mrs. Clinton has tried to claim.  Now we're beginning to get a more complete picture of just how just how comprehensively false her "no classified material" assertion was:

The classified emails stored on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private server contained information from five U.S. intelligence agencies and included material related to the fatal 2012 Benghazi attacks, McClatchy has learned. Of the five classified emails, the one known to be connected to Benghazi was among 296 emails made public in May by the State Department. Intelligence community officials have determined it was improperly released. Revelations about the emails have put Clinton in the crosshairs of a broadening inquiry into whether she or her aides mishandled classified information when she used a private server set up at her New York home to conduct official State Department business. While campaigning for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, Clinton has repeatedly denied she ever sent or received classified information. Two inspectors general have indicated that five emails they have reviewed were not marked classified at the time they were stored on her private server but that the contents were in fact “secret.” … “Even if Secretary Clinton or her aides didn’t run afoul of any criminal provisions, the fact that classified information was identified within the emails is exactly why use of private emails ...is not supposed to be allowed,” said Bradley Moss, a Washington attorney who specializes in national security matters. “Both she and her team made a serious management mistake that no one should ever repeat.”

Again, these classified and secret emails were discovered within a small sub-sample of the broader contents of her server -- tens of thousands of emails of which have been permanently deleted by Clinton and her lawyers, without any supervision. And with respect to Mr. Moss, these were not "management mistakes." Her decisions were calculated and deliberate. As Andrea Mitchell's intelligence sources concluded this week, the only conceivable reason someone in Clinton's position might set up a private email server in violation of numerous records-keeping rules and regulations would be to thwart efforts at oversight and accountability. And the excuse she initially floated was promptly debunked by her own virtual paper trail; the sorts of records, ironically, she sought to expunge.  In light of the IG's evidence regarding Clinton's unsecure email server and her dishonesty about transmitting highly sensitive materials, the intelligence community is reportedly girding itself for a full-scale security breach:

The U.S. intelligence community is bracing for the possibility that former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s private email account contains hundreds of revelations of classified information from spy agencies and is taking steps to contain any damage to national security, according to documents and interviews Thursday. The top lawmakers on the House and Senate intelligence committee have been notified in recent days that the extent of classified information on Mrs. Clinton’s private email server was likely far more extensive than the four emails publicly acknowledged last week as containing some sensitive spy agency secrets. A U.S. official directly familiar with the notification, who spoke only on condition of anonymity, said the notification of possibly hundreds of additional emails with classified secrets came from the State Department Freedom of Information Act office to the Office of Inspector General for the Director of National Intelligence...The U.S. official said the intelligence community has been informed that secret information had been contained in some of Mrs. Clinton’s private emails that originated from the FBI, the DNI and the CIA as well as a spy satellite agency. It is believed the 30,000 emails remain on a thumb drive in the possession of Mrs. Clinton’s private attorney, David Kendall.

Team Clinton is busy assuring everyone that her lawyer's thumb drive -- which is apparently loaded with state secrets -- is secure.  The State Department is also playing defense for her, adopting a "nothing to see here" approach.  Once again, though: What about the those 32,000 permanently deleted emails, which the Chinese, Russians and others almost certainly have in their possession?  Hillary Clinton lied that each and every one of those destroyed emails were entirely personal in nature.  Subsequent evidence, furnished by the hack of a third party's insecure email, has proven this claim  to be false. Mrs. Clinton broke the rules to serve her own political interests, and flat-out lied about it, over and over again.  And while her arrogance, secrecy and dishonesty are certainly important elements of the email scandal, the real story is how her reckless and self-serving schemes demonstrated a shocking ambivalence toward US national security.  I'll leave you with this, which is…not the hallmark of a campaign that's going particularly well:


The infamous "right-wing conspiracy" now includes the New York Times, apparently. Sure, that'll sell.