Or why I wish pundits would refrain from the label ‘scandal’ and instead use ‘alleged crime’.
In 2013 a Romanian cracker named ‘Guccifer’ cracked Sidney Blumenthal’s AOL email account[1]. He released four memos Blumenthal had written for Secretary of State Clinton regarding Libya. Guccifer sent the memos to a large audience including government officials and journalists. Guccifer made a pattern of this type of crack and it lead to his arrest. Guccifer, now known to be Marcel Lazăr Lehel, is serving a seven year sentence in Romania. What interests us all now, is that Guccifer sent his mails to Clinton at a non-governmental address, hrc22@clintonemail.com. Prior to this it had not been publicly known that Clinton used a private email address.
In parallel, the State Department had been going over the Benghazi Commission’s subpoena for Clinton’s emails. They didn’t find any that went to or came from a government address. In August of 2014 [2] they began negotiating with Clinton’s lawyers to obtain the emails from her private accounts. Clinton complied by sending a sifted set of documents to State. She claimed that she had deleted everything else, deeming it personal.
This caused all sorts of consternation with the Benghazi Committee[3]. They rightfully assumed that since Clinton’s emails were not on government servers, that they wouldn’t be getting the full story of what happened then and in the weeks afterward. The State department started to release Clinton’s emails in accordance with a court order laid down in May.
That’s the preamble. At this point Clinton is guilty of horrible judgement and plotting to circumvent the Federal Records Act. She’s a ‘political’ and because she complied with the State Department’s demand for the emails it would appear she’s been absolved of these normally career-ending moves.
When we get into August of 2015 we begin to learn that three agencies, the DIA, NSA and the NGA are pissed at the State Department.[4]. It would seem that in the May, 2015 email dump, State released an email from Huma Abedin to Clinton that contained information that all three agencies considered classified. In addition, between 7Aug15 and the report on 11Aug15 the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community, at the request of Congress, examined two emails and determined them to be the among the highest levels of known US Government classification, TOP SECRET//SI/TK//NOFORN. (Top secret // Sensitive Information / TALENT KEYHOLE [satellite] // Don’t Distribute to Foreign Nationals). This prompted the FBI to seize the computer that was acting as Clinton’s server.[5] This is a serious infraction under US law. Just knowingly having that information outside of government networks is against the law. At this point, Clinton as well as Huma Abedin have serious legal problems.[6]
In January 2016, an article[7] by John R. Schindler caused many a head to start looking at Clinton’s email problem in a larger light. Given his experience in such documents Schindler posited that the intelligence that Blumenthal forwarded to Clinton was actually NSA generated material. In a note of discord against their previous boss, the State Department announced that 22 emails that should have been in the court ordered email dump were not going to be released because they were “top secret”. The article fails to mention if the emails were of the TOP SECRET classification.[8]
Update: On February 1 it was revealed that the Withheld Clinton emails contain ‘operational’ intel, put lives at risk. John R. Schindler continues to be the ‘go to’ resource to fill-in some of the blanks in the Fox report. [15] These are now very serious allegations and I hope the USG and her allies are/were able to extricate their members of the intelligence community.
That’s a quick summary of what is in the public domain regarding Clinton’s email problems. Clinton is banking heavily on ‘political impunity’ and the the word ‘knowingly’ in 18 U.S. Code § 1924. In light of a released email in which Clinton instructs Jake Sullivan to turn the information into ‘nonpaper with no identifying heading and send nonsecure’, I’d say her defense is thin.[9]
We can rule out ‘accidental’ as well because outside of the Internet, there are three other physically separated networks (not including segments where tunnelling is in use) all at play; NIPRNet (which does provide gateway access to the Internet), SIPRNet and JWICS. NIPRNet (Non-classified IP Router Network) is where the aides would have emailed from. SIPRNet (Secret IP Router Network) is a parallel but separated physical network for SECRET level classifications. JWICS (Joint Worldwide Intelligence Comunications System) is yet another physically separated network for the TOP SECRET classification. In order for the TOP SECRET information in Clinton’s server to have gotten there it would have had to be physically copied from JWICS to NIPRNet and then emailed out. This is a well-written if simplified article that describes these networks and what a person would need to do to move information from one to the others.
For more information on those networks you can check out Federation of American Scientists, Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Instructions (CJCSI). Links in the footnotes.
1. Guccifer discovers clintonemail.com
2. Clinton sends self-selected email to State Department
3. Benghazi committee timeline
4. Huma’s email causes a huff.
5. TOP SECRET//SI/TK//NOFORN
6. 18 U.S. Code § 1924 – Unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents or material
7. Back to Sid
8. Oh, State can’t release some either.
9. Strip the headings, send nonsecure
10. FAS on NIPRNet
11. FAS on SIPRNet
12. FAS on JWICS
13. DISA Data Services portfolio
14. CJCSI 6211.02D, Defense Information Systems Network (DISN) Responsibilities
15. Lives are at stake.
