FLASH UPDATE: THE “HILLARY CLINTON SERVER IN PHYSICAL CUSTODY OF THE FBI — HOWEVER, INFORMATION FROM CLINTON SERVER WAS ‘MIGRATED’ TO ANOTHER SERVER — CASCADING FACTS INDICATE CRIMES ARE LIKELY TO HAVE BEEN COMMITTED” EDITION

ACCORDING TO THE WA-PO, FBI AGENTS HAVE TAKEN POSSESSION OF HILLARY CLINTON’S E-MAIL SERVER, WHICH IS AT THE CENTER OF THE CURRENT E-MAIL CONTROVERSY  —   THE E-MAIL SERVER WAS TURNED OVER TO THE FBI LATE WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON FROM A “DATA CENTER” >>> IN NEW JERSEY <<<

AN ATTORNEY FOR THE COMPUTER SERVICES COMPANY THAT “MANAGED”  THE CLINTON SERVER SAYS THAT  “...  THE OLD SERVER ‘WAS BLANK’ AND NO LONGER CONTAINED USEFUL DATA....” —   ALSO THAT INFORMATION ON THAT SERVER "MIGRATED" TO ANOTHER SERVER OPERATED BY THE COMPUTER COMPANY

MORE PROBLEMS FOR HILLARY CLINTON AND/OR HER TEAM  —  MULTIPLE SOURCES INDICATE THAT “SATELLITE IMAGERY” AND “SIGNALS INTELLIGENCE” WAS PART OF A “TOP SECRET” E-MAIL CONTAINED ON HILLARY CLINTON’S SERVER  —   ALSO THAT “TOP SECRET” MARKINGS LIKELY  ON THE ORIGINAL SOURCE MATERIAL THAT CAME INTO THE U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT WERE "STRIPPED" BY A  STAFFER FOR THEN SEC/STATE HILLARY CLINTON

A late Wednesday night report in the Washington Post states, “The e-mail server used by Hillary Rodham Clinton when she served as secretary of state was turned over to the FBI late Wednesday afternoon from a private data center in New Jersey, according to an attorney familiar with the transfer....  ‘It was picked up about 4 p.m.,’  said Barbara J. Wells, a Denver lawyer who represents Platte River Networks Inc., a small computer services firm that has managed the Clintons’ private e-mail system since mid-2013....  Wells said her client was contacted by the FBI, which expressed interest in obtaining the old server. The FBI did not have a search warrant or subpoena and did not interview her clients, she said.....” ( See “Hillary Clinton’s e-mail server turned over to FBI” by Tom Hamberger & Karen Tumulty, 8/12/15, The Washington Post/ Politics [http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/clintons-e-mail-server-turned-over-to-fbi/2015/08/12/aba5feea-4160-11e5-8ab4-c73967a143d3_story.html]).

THE QUITE SURPRISING TRAIL OF THE HILLARY CLINTON E-MAIL SERVER

The Washington Post article, cited above, described the following trail taken by this Clinton server, which had not heretofore been outlined: “....  Before it was taken to the data center in New Jersey, the server had been in the basement of the Clintons’ private home in Chappaqua, N.Y., during the time she was secretary of state, according to people familiar with the Clintons’ e-mail network....  After she left government service in early 2013, the Clintons decided to upgrade the system, hiring Platte River as the new manager of a privately managed e-mail network. The old server was removed from the Clinton home by Platte River and stored in a third party data center, which are set up to provide security from threats of hacking and natural disaster, Wells said.... Platte River Networks has retained control of the old server since it took over management of the Clintons’ e-mail system. She said that the old server “was blank,” and no longer contained useful data....”

SOME OF HILLARY CLINTON’S E-MAIL DATA HAD BEEN  “MIGRATED” TO A NEW SERVER OPERATED BY PLATTE RIVER NETWORKS

The Tumulty-Hamberger report in the WaPo went on to quote the lawyer for Platte River Networks as follows: “....  ‘The information had been migrated over to a different server for purposes of transition,’ from the old system to one run by Platte River, she said, recalling the transfer that occurred in June 2013....  ‘To my knowledge the data on the old server is not available now on any servers or devices in Platte River Network’s control.’...   She said that Platte River officials ‘have been working with and cooperating fully with the FBI.’  She added that ‘we have been assured that Platte River Networks is not the subject of any investigation.’...”

LATE REPORTS ABOUT THE “TOP SECRET” INFORMATION ON HILLARY CLINTON’S E-MAIL  —   IT WAS “EXCEPTIONALLY HIGHLY CLASSIFIED AND MUST BE HANDLED WITH GREAT CARE UNDER PENALTY OF SERIOUS CONSEQUENCES FOR MISHANDLING” 

According to the Daily Beast, “These weren’t just ordinary secrets found in [Hillary] Clinton’s private server, but some of the most classified material the U.S. government has....”  

John R. Schindler’s report in “The Daily Beast” indicates that  “....  Hillary Clinton [had]  little choice but to hand over her server to authorities since it now appears increasingly likely that someone on her staff violated federal laws regarding the handling of classified materials. On August 11, after extensive investigation, the Intelligence Community’s Inspector General reported to Congress that it had found several violations of security policy in Clinton’s personal emails....  Most seriously, the Inspector General assessed that Clinton’s emails included information that was highly classified —  yet mislabeled as unclassified. Worse, the information in question should have been classified up to the level of “TOP SECRET//SI//TK//NOFORN,” according to the Inspector General’s report....” ( See “The Spy Satellite Secrets in Hillary’s Emails” by John R. Schindler, 8/12/15, The Daily Beast [http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/08/12/the-spy-satellite-secrets-in-hillary-s-emails.html]).

Thankfully, Mr. Schindler goes on to tell us,  “.... [S]o let me explain what this means:

• TOP SECRET, as the name implies, is the highest official classification level in the U.S. government, defined as information whose unauthorized release ‘could cause exceptionally grave damage to national security or foreign relations.’....
• SI refers to Special Intelligence, meaning it is information derived from intercepted communications, which is the business of the National Security Agency, America’s single biggest source of intelligence. They’re the guys who eavesdrop on phone calls, map who’s calling who, and comb through emails. SI is a subset of what the intelligence community calls Sensitive Compartmented Information or SCI. And these materials always require special handling and protection. They are to be kept in a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility or SCIF, which is a special hardened room that is safe from both physical and electronic intrusion....
• TK refers to Talent Keyhole, which is an IC caveat indicating that the classified material was obtained via satellite....
• NOFORN, as the name implies, means that the materials can only be shown to Americans, not to foreigners....”

Schindler sums all that up like this: “....   In short: Information at the “TOP SECRET//SI//TK//NOFORN” level is considered exceptionally highly classified and must be handled with great care under penalty of serious consequences for mishandling. Every person who is cleared and “read on” for access to such information signs reams of paperwork and receives detailed training about how it is to be handled, no exceptions—and what the consequences will be if the rules are not followed....”

NO DOUBT THAT THERE WAS A VIOLATION OF FEDERAL LAW BY PUTTING “TOPSECRET//SI” INFORMATION ON AN UNCLASSIFIED SYSTEM 

In addition to all of the matter discussed above,  John R. Schindler did a long analysis of the possible criminality involved in the handling of the  “TOP SECRET//SI//TK//NOFORN” information that was in Hillary Clinton’s E-mal.

In relevant parts of that analysis,  he said this: “....   There is no doubt that [Hillary Clinton], or someone on her State Department staff, violated federal law by putting TOP SECRET//SI information on an unclassified system. That it was Hillary’s private, offsite server makes the case even worse from a security viewpoint. Claims that they “didn’t know” such information was highly classified do not hold water and are irrelevant. It strains belief that anybody with clearances didn’t recognize that NSA information, which is loaded with classification markings, was signals intelligence, or SIGINT. It’s possible that the classified information found in Clinton’s email trove wasn’t marked as such. But if that classification notice was omitted, it wasn’t the U.S. intelligence community that took such markings away. Moreover, anybody holding security clearances has already assumed the responsibility for handling it properly....  As Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton had no authority to disseminate IC information on her own, neither could she make it less highly classified (a process termed “downgrading” in the spy trade) without asking IC permission first....  There’s still a lot we don’t know about Hillary’s Emailgate. Exactly how many emails contained TOPSECRET//SI information is unclear. We may never know since thousands of emails were already destroyed by Clinton. Who exactly placed the classified information in emails—it may not have been Hillary Clinton—and how did they access the information in the first place? How many of Hillary’s staffers at Foggy Bottom were also using her personal server?...  The FBI is now on the case and one hopes they will exercise due diligence in their investigation of what may be a serious leak of classified information, made worse by the fact that Clinton’s personal server was wholly unencrypted for three months, leaving it wide open to exploitation by foreign intelligence services....”

FOX NEWS REPORTS THAT A HILLARY CLINTON STAFFER STRIPPED-OUT CLASSIFICATION MARKINGS FROM INFORMATION THAT APPEARED ON HILLARY CLINTON’S E-MAILS 

On Wednesday evening, Megyn Kelly reported that the “Top Secret” information contained among Hillary Clinton’s E-mails was from “Satellite Imagery” and “Signals Intelligence” and that all such information would have classifications markings on it when it was sent from the intelligence services to the State Department. In addition, Ms. Kelly reported that someone on Hillary Clinton’s staff “stripped” the classification markings off the material that appeared on Ms. Clinton’s E-mail. Shortly there after,  Judge Andrew Napolitano reacted on the same program to Kelly’s reports that a Hillary Clinton staffer stripped "top secret" classification markings off information on her private email server (See “Judge Napolitano: Hillary's Legal Problems 'Worse Than Grave'.” as seen on the Kelly File, 9/12/15, Fox News/ Insider [http://insider.foxnews.com/2015/08/12/judge-napolitano-hillary-clintons-legal-problems-worse-grave]

Judge Napolitano explained that what he heard described would constitute two felonies: “altering a top secret document” and “placing a top secret document in an unsecured place....” H particularly noted, “...  In this case Clinton's server....”

Judge Napolitano went on to say this: “.... ‘Our colleagues in the intelligence community have told me with certainty that if it was on that server, it can be extracted....  ‘If  “top secret” was on there, we know she lied, and she committed a felony by possessing and storing top secret information on an insecure server. If 'top secret' was not there, we will know that someone removed it.’...”

JUDGE NAPOLITANO SAYS HILLARY CLINTON’S LEGAL PROBLEMS ARE "... WORSE THAN GRAVE"

Napolitano, Fox News’ top legal expert, then agreed with host, Megyn Kelly, that these new disclosures raised Hillary Clinton’s email scandal to a whole new level, possibly that of a criminal conspiracy.  Judge Napolitano then noted that earlier in the day, while appearing on another Fox News program, he had said that Hillary Clinton's legal problems were gravely serious. The in conclusion he said,  "Now, 16 hours later, I don't know what word to use, but they are worse than grave."