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.’...”
UPDATE: THE “IS THE NOOSE TIGHTENING AROUND HUMA ABEDIN’S NECK ?” EDITION
ReplyDeleteHUMA ABEDIN’S HAVING HER OWN PRIVATE E-MAIL ACCOUNT ON HILLARY CLINTON’S SERVER, “... WHICH WAS USED AT TIMES FOR GOVERNMENT BUSINESS...” WAS AN UNUSUAL ARRANGEMENT, EVEN FOR TOP BRASS AT THE STATE DEPARTMENT
ABEDIN MIGHT HAVE ACCOUNTED FOR SEVEN THOUSAND (7000) GOVERNMENT-RELATED E-MAILS — IT’S NOT CLEAR THAT ALL HAVE BEEN TURNED OVER — OR THAT NONE HAVE BEEN DELETED — FURTHERMORE, HUMA ABEDIN HAS NOT PROVIDED ANY SWORN STATEMENT THAT SHE TURNED OVER ALL HER E-MAILS WHEN A FEDERAL COURT MADE A “REQUEST” FOR SUCH A SWORN STATEMENT
According to a report in Politico, “Huma Abedin, Hillary Clinton’s most trusted confidante, is increasingly becoming a central figure in the email scandal that’s haunting her boss on the campaign trail, as Republicans and federal judges seek information about Clinton’s communications while she was running the State Department.... The 2016 Democratic front-runner on Monday told a federal judge that Abedin — long considered her boss’s keeper and even dubbed her “shadow” — had her own email account on Clinton’s now infamous home-brewed server, “which was used at times for government business,” Clinton acknowledged. That’s an unusual arrangement, even for top brass at the State Department.... Abedin has hired a team of lawyers, one of whom is a former Clinton aide, who are responding to information requests from the courts and State. They’ve denied any wrongdoing on the part of their client and said Abedin is cooperating with requests for official emails in her possession, aiming to turn over all her correspondence by the end of August.... But her lawyers — Karen Dunn and Miguel Rodriguez — didn’t respond to questions about emails on Clinton’s separate server. Dunn is a partner at Boies, Schiller & Flexner, and she served as a senior advisor to Clinton when she was in the Senate....” (See “Hillary Clinton email probe turns to Huma” by Rachel Bade, 8/13/15, Politco [http://www.politico.com/story/2015/08/hillary-clinton-email-probe-turns-to-huma-121314.html]).
BACKGROUND FOR THE INQUIRY
In 2013, news broke that Huma Abedin had been given a special government employee status, which had allowed her to be on the payroll for the philanthropic Clinton Foundation and Teneo, a consulting firm founded by former Clinton White House adviser Doug Band, simultaneously while on leave but maintaining her position as a Hillary Clinton aide at the State Department. She previously had not disclosed the multiple-employer situation. According to Rachel Bade’s report in Politico, “.... Abedin has said she stepped back from government work and became a contractor so she could be with her family and her newborn son. But since then, critics have questioned her about whether she had a conflict of interest while working at State and alongside close friends of the Clinton family....”
In addition, Politico says that a source told a Senate oversight panel chaired by Chuck Grassley that the State Department inspector general had probed Abedin not only for overpayment issues but also over a potential conflict of interest. “.... The source was able to specify that Abedin and Band were on more than 7,000 emails together while she worked at State and detailed an apparent October 2013 letter to the FBI that clarified that the watchdog’s probe was looking at potential criminal misconduct.... It is unclear whether all her official emails on Clinton’s server were saved....”
Interestingly, on Monday Hillary Clinton declared under penalty of perjury that she had turned over all her work-related emails to the State Department for record-keeping purposes; Abedin declined the Federal Judge’s request for her to do the same thing.
UPDATE: THE “NOW IT’S ABOUT HILLARY'S E-MAILS TALKING ABOUT DRONE STRIKE OPERATIONS IN PAKISTAN” EDITION
ReplyDeletePART OF THE CLINTON TEAM PUSHBACK IS THAT THE CLASSIFIED INFORMATION CONTAINED IN THE DISPUTED E-MAILS SHOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN CLASSIFIED
LET’S GET THIS STRAIGHT --- IS FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE AND PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE HILLARY CLINTON SAYING THAT SHE DIDN’T KNOW THAT E-MAILS ABOUT “SATELLITE IMAGERY”; “SIGNALS INTELLIGENCE” AND “DRONE STRIKE OPERATIONS” WERE OR SHOULD HAVE BEEN CLASSIFIED ? ? ? OR IS SHE SAYING THAT KIND OF INFORMATION SHOULDN'T BE CLASSIFIED
According to an AP report, “The two emails on Hillary Rodham Clinton's private server that an auditor deemed "top secret" include a discussion of a news article detailing a U.S. drone operation and a separate conversation that could point back to highly classified material in an improper manner or merely reflect information collected independently, U.S. officials who have reviewed the correspondence told The Associated Press....” ( See “AP EXCLUSIVE: Top secret Clinton emails include drone talk” by Bradley Klapper & Ken Dilanian, 8/14/15, Associated Press [http://news.yahoo.com/ap-exclusive-top-secret-clinton-emails-drone-talk-071308584--election.html]).
The article goes on to state, “.... The sourcing of the information in the emails could have significant political implications as the 2016 presidential campaign heats up. Clinton, the front-runner for the Democratic nomination, agreed this week to turn over to the FBI the private server she used as secretary of state, and Republicans in Congress have seized on the involvement of federal law enforcement as a sign that she was either negligent with the nation's secrets or worse....”
THE CLINTON TEAM PUSHES BACK
The authors of the AP piece took pains to point out that, “.... In a four-page fact sheet that accompanied a letter to Clinton supporters, Clinton spokeswoman Jennifer Palmieri stressed that Clinton was permitted to use her own email account as a government employee and that the same process concerning classification reviews would still be taking place had she used the standard "state.gov" email account used by most department employees. The State Department, meanwhile, stressed that it wasn't clear if the material at issue ought to be considered classified at all....”
Also the AP report said this: “.... In a series of August 2009 emails, Clinton aide Huma Abedin told Clinton that the U.S. point-man for Afghanistan, Richard Holbrooke, and another official wanted ‘to do a secure’ conversation to discuss Afghan elections. Clinton said she could talk after she received a fax of a classified Holbrooke memo, also on a secure line. Later, Abedin wrote: ‘He can talk now. We can send secure fax now. And then connect call.’... But other times, the line was blurred....”
Previous reports had indicated that the original source material for the Clinton E-mails contained classification symbols indicating that the information involved “satellite imagery” and ‘signals intelligence.”
So the Clinton folks are all set to tell us that E-mails containing information from “satellite imagery” and “signals intelligence,” and talking about “drone strike operations” should never have been classified and/or Hillary Clinton didn’t know about any such classification at the time of those E-mails.
HMMMM !
UPDATE: THE “NEWEST HILLARY CLINTON LINE OF DEFENSE IN THE E-MAIL SCANDAL — OR 'THE JUST LAUGH IT OFF DEFENSE' ” EDITION
ReplyDeleteTIME MAGAZINE REPORTS — SPEAKING TO A GATHERING OF HER TRUE BELIEVERS IN IOWA, HILLARY CLINTON MADE A JOKE ABOUT HER SNAPCHAT ACCOUNT — “... I LOVE IT. I LOVE IT. THOSE MESSAGES DISAPPEAR ALL BY THEMSELVES...”
“TIME” MISSED THE REAL JOKES — HILLARY CLINTON RETURNED TO HER WELL-WORN THEMES THAT SHE HAS COMPLETELY COOPERATED WITH THE INVESTIGATIONS OF HER E-MAILS AND SERVER — AND — THE WHOLE BENGHAZI, E-MAIL, E-MAIL SERVER, CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS FLAP IS JUST POLITICS DRIVEN BY THE SUPER-PACS AND REPUBLICANS
Time Magazine/Time.com is reporting that “Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton joked about the ongoing investigation over her use of a private email server while at the State Department, telling a group of Iowa Democrats that the hubbub is just ‘politics.’... Speaking to about 2,000 Democrats at the Iowa Democratic Wing Ding at the historic Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa, Clinton was defiant about the controversy and her use of the personal account, days after turning over her private server to the Justice Department....”
(See “Clinton Jokes About Email Investigation” by Zeke J Miller, 8/14/15, Time Magazine/ Politics [http://time.com/3999368/hillary-clinton-emails-investigation-joke/] ).
The folks at Times Magazine went on and quoted Hillary’s quip or as they called it “joke” like this: ‘You may have seen that I recently launched a Snapchat account,’ Clinton said at the start of her 25-minute address. ‘I love it. I love it. Those messages disappear all by themselves.’...”
Then Time continued with several Hillary Clinton quotes that returned to both recent and years-old themes: “.... ‘You know what, it’s not about emails or servers either — it’s about politics,’ Clinton said, her voice rising as the crowd of Democratic loyalists cheered. ‘I will do my part to provide transparency to Americans, that’s why I’m insisting 55,000 pages of my emails be published as soon as possible. I didn’t offer to answer questions for months before Congress. I just provided my server to the Justice Department. But here’s what I won’t do. I won’t get down in the mud with them. I won’t play politics with national security or dishonor the memory of those who we lost.’... ‘I won’t pretend that this is anything other than what it is: the same old partisans games we’ve seen so many times before,’ Clinton added. ‘So I don’t care how many super PACs and Republicans pile on.’...”
The thing that Time Magazine seemed to have missed was that Hillary’s stuff about cooperating with the investigations about her E-mails, and that all of the hub-bub was just Republican politics driven by the super-pacs was actually funnier than her quip about her Snapchat account.
UPDATE: THE “TENSENESS AT TEAM CLINTON” EDITION
ReplyDeleteTHE CLINTON CAMPAIGN IS BEGINNING TO CHOKE AS THE COMPLEXION OF THE GAME CHANGES CONCERNING HILLARY’S E-MAILS, HOW THEY HAVE BEEN KEPT AND WHAT WAS REALLY ON THEM
“THE ISSUES AROUND CLINTON’S E-MAILS HAVE ALSO INTENSIFIED AS IT HAS BECOME CLEAR THAT A NUMBER OF [HILLARY CLINTON’S] STATEMENTS DEFENDING HER ACTIONS NOW APPEAR TO BE FALSE.”
THE WASHINGTON POST
The Washington Post has reported that the “Clinton Team” has turned from an “... apparent lack of concern... into a sense of anxiety...” over the whole E-mail controversy (See “Clinton’s team went from nonchalant to nervous over e-mail controversy” by Carol D. Leonnig, Karen Tumulty & Rosalind S. Helderman, 8/14/15, The Washington Post [http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-clintons-team-went-from-nonchalant-to-nervous-over-e-mail-controversy/2015/08/14/347f1066-405e-11e5-9561-4b3dc93e3b9a_story.html]).
Specifically, the WaPo report went on with this insider quote: “.... ‘They’re worried about it,’ said a longtime Clinton adviser and confidant who agreed to discuss the mood of the campaign team only on the condition of anonymity. ‘They don’t know where it goes. That’s the problem.’...”
THIS IS WHAT HAS TEAM CLINTON SPOOKED
“.... The controversy over her private e-mail setup has moved into a new and, potentially, more serious phase. What had begun five months ago as a relatively narrow question about proper archiving of public records has become a bigger, more politically dangerous one: Whether the then-secretary of state and her close aides, in choosing to use a private e-mail system, disregarded common sense and may have put sensitive information at risk of falling into the wrong hands.... The first warning came July 31 when a Justice Department prosecutor called Clinton’s longtime lawyer, David Kendall, seeking a thumb drive that contained a copy of the 30,000 e-mails that Clinton had turned over earlier to the State Department, according to a person briefed about the conversation. Six days later, Kendall turned over to the FBI his thumb drive — and two copies — which had been stored in a safe in his office provided by the State Department. Next, the FBI wanted Clinton’s private server. That too, has been handed over, arriving in government hands Wednesday afternoon from the New Jersey data center where it was being kept....”
This observation by the three writers who did this article for the Washington Post is especially telling: “.... The issues around Clinton’s e-mails have also intensified as it has become clear that a number of her statements defending her actions now appear to be false....” Their article continued with an exhaustive analysis and chronology of the relatively recently-commenced Justice Department investigation into the entire Hillary Clinton E-mail set-up, attempts to preserve and secure evidence, and the emergency measures taken to secure any “classified” material that Hillary Clinton might have stored on her E-mail system.