The FBI is investigating whether members of Hillary Clinton’s inner
circle “cut and pasted” material from the government’s classified network so
that it could be sent to her private e-mail address, former State Department security
officials say.
Clinton and her top aides had access
to a Pentagon-run classified network that goes up to the Secret level, as well
as a separate system used for Top Secret communications.
The two systems —
the Secret Internet Protocol Router Network (SIPRNet) and Joint Worldwide
Intelligence Communications System (JWICS) — are
not connected to the unclassified system, known as the Non-Classified Internet
Protocol Router Network (NIPRNet). You cannot e-mail from one system to the
other, though you can use
NIPRNet to send e-mails outside the government.
Somehow, highly classified information from
SIPRNet, as well as even the super-secure JWICS, jumped from those closed
systems to the open system and turned
up in at least 1,340 of Clinton’s home e-mails — including several the CIA
earlier this month flagged as containing ultra-secret Sensitive Compartmented
Information and Special Access Programs, a subset of SCI.
SAP includes “dark projects,” such
as drone operations, while SCI protects intelligence sources and methods.
Fox News reported Friday that at
least one of Clinton’s e-mails included sensitive information on spies.
“It takes a very conscious effort
to move a classified e-mail or cable from the classified systems over to the
unsecured open system and
then send it to Hillary Clinton’s personal e-mail account,” said Raymond
Fournier, a veteran Diplomatic Security Service special agent. “That’s no
less than a two-conscious-step process.”
He says it’s clear from some of the
classified e-mails made public that someone on Clinton’s staff essentially “cut
and pasted” content from classified cables into the messages sent to her. The
classified markings are gone, but the content is classified at the highest
levels — and so sensitive in nature that “it would have been obvious to
Clinton.” Most likely the information was, in turn, e-mailed to her via
NIPRNet.
To work around the closed,
classified systems, which are accessible only by secure desktop workstations
whose hard drives must be removed and stored overnight in a safe, Clinton’s staff would have
simply retyped classified information from the systems into the non-classified
system or taken a screen shot of the classified document, Fournier
said. “Either way, it’s totally illegal.”
FBI agents are zeroing in on three
of Clinton’s top department aides. Most of the Clinton e-mails deemed
classified by intelligence agency reviewers were sent to her by her chief of staff Cheryl Mills or
deputy chiefs Huma Abedin and Jake Sullivan.
In one e-mail, Clinton pressured
Sullivan to declassify cabled remarks by a foreign leader.
“Just e-mail it,” Clinton snapped,
to which Sullivan replied: “Trust me, I share your exasperation. But until ops
converts it to the unclassified e-mail system, there is no physical way for me
to e-mail it.”
In another recently released e-mail,
Clinton instructed Sullivan to convert a classified document into an
unclassified e-mail attachment by scanning it into an unsecured computer and
sending it to her without any classified markings. “Turn into nonpaper w no
identifying heading and send nonsecure,” she ordered.
Top Secret/SCI e-mails received by
Clinton include a 2012 staff e-mail sent to the then-secretary containing
investigative data about Benghazi terrorist suspects wanted by the FBI and
sourcing a regional security officer. They also include a 2011 message from
Clinton’s top aides that contains military intelligence from United States
Africa Command gleaned from satellite images of troop movements in Libya, along
with the travel and protection plans for Ambassador Christopher Stevens, who
was later killed in a terrorist attack in Benghazi.
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