In 2013 it was reported that Hillary Clinton’s personal email had been compromised by the hacker entitled “Guccifer.”
He has gained access to the AOL account of one of Hillary’s staff Sidney Blumenthal and sent screenshots of her personal email to different media outlets.
What the emails contain
The last reports involving Hillary’s mail account is that she was receiving classified information on her personal email. Hillary has been using her own private server instead of a governmental computer, while she was secretary of state.
Reports from the Intelligence officials suggest that Clinton was receiving information from five different agencies. Several emails have been traveling back and forth regarding the Benghazi incident from 2012, when Islamic militants attacked an U.S governmental building killing four Americans. Among them was the U.S Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.
Information about the Battle of Benghazi has been provided by the National Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency and also the National Geospatial – Intelligence Agency, a very silent air spy providing geospatial maps and tracks.
The other two agencies proved to be from the National Agency, from the director itself and also from the CIA.
Around 30,000 emails have been turned over to the State Department, although not all emails have been sent, as some of them have also been deleted by Hillary.
Hillary’s “truth”
Hillary Clinton has repeatedly denied that she was in possession of classified information stating:
I did not email any classified material to anyone on my email. There is no classified material. So I’m certainly well aware of the classification requirements and did not send classified material.”
She also stated that at the time she received them, the emails were not marked as “classified”.
Well, I would say make up your mind, as it does not sound right. Why use your personal email to receive information about the Benghazi terrorist attack?
In reality
Two inspectors, General I. Charles McCulough III and Steve Linick have stated that the Office of the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community (IC IG) sent a formal notification to the Intelligence comities providing them with the necessary support from the IC IG to the Stated Department IG.
The IC IG has found that 4 emails from a limited sample of 40 emails from the total 30,000 have been containing classified IC-derived information. The emails containing classified information have not been marked retroactively by the State Department, instead they were generated as classified from the beginning and according to IC classification officials, and the information remains the same today: classified.
The four emails have not been released by the State FOIA process, but reports state that emails did not contain classification markings of any kind. As technology is very advanced and hackers are hungry for private information, these classified materials should not have been exchanged from a personal server.
Still under investigation
Bradley Moss, the Washington lawyer, told news reports that although Secretary Clinton or her staff did not perform any criminal offence, the use of private emails should not be allowed to store classified information.
FBI has been alerted regarding this exchange of classified emails by Sen. Charles Grassley, as there is a possibility that Hillary Clinton’s lawyer is in possession of a computer thumb drive containing information of national security and has asked FBI chief James Comey to have it secured.
IC IG informed of a potential compromise of classified information and that information marked as classified since 2009 may exist at least on one private server and on thumb drives that are not in possession of the government.
To not be any confusion this has not yet been turned into a criminal referral, right now it is a security referral, as IC IG is required to refer potential compromise of national security information to the appropriate officials.
There has been a court order since May 19, 2015 for 55,000 pages from Hillary Clinton’s emails to be released, from the period she was still a Secretary of the State.
The former Secretary of the State informed that only emails and documents of personal nature have been deleted and all work related emails have been kept and provided to the State Department.
Julia Frifield, which is the Assistant Secretary of the State reported that around 10 emails and 5 others from Hillary’s confidant Sidney Blumenthal have not been found on the State Department records.
The former Espionage Act of 1917 now amended as 18 U.S.C states that “unlawful removal and storage of classified information“ is considered when a person knowingly removes documents marked as classified without authorization with the intent to keep them in an unauthorized location. It is punishable with a fine or prison term, and this law might apply to Hillary’s case.
Only time will tell.
