Clinton Sent Classified Information Over Email While at State Department By Byron Tau
http://www.wsj.com/articles/clinton-sent-classified-information-over-email-while-at-state-department-review-finds-1437779884
Review Finds Intelligence watchdog finds former secretary of state sent at least four emails from her personal account containing classified information
WASHINGTON—A government intelligence watchdog found that Hillary Clinton sent at least four emails from her personal account containing classified information during her tenure as secretary of state.
In a letter to members of Congress on Thursday, the inspector general of the intelligence community concluded that Mrs. Clinton’s email contains material from the intelligence community that should have been considered “secret”—the second-highest level of classification—at the time it was sent. A copy of the letter to Congress was provided to The Wall Street Journal by a spokeswoman for the inspector general.
The four emails in question “were classified when they were sent and are classified now,” said Andrea Williams, a spokeswoman for the inspector general. The inspector general’s review covered about 40 emails in Mrs. Clinton’s inbox, which suggests the trove of more than 30,000 emails may contain more potentially confidential, secret or top-secret information.
The inspectors general of both the intelligence community and the State Department released a joint statement Friday afternoon saying that they made a counterintelligence referral to the FBI, not a criminal one.
The disclosures roiled her presidential campaign. Mrs. Clinton, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, said on Friday in New York that there were “inaccuracies” in reports about her email usage, but didn’t offer specifics. She noted that she has voluntarily released 55,000 pages of email and offered to testify before a congressional committee.
“Maybe the heat is getting to everybody,” Mrs. Clinton said. “We are all accountable to the American people to get the facts right, and I will do my part. But I’m also going to stay focused on the issues, particularly the big issues that really matter to American families.”
The investigation concluded that Mrs. Clinton should have used a secure network to transmit the emails in question. The information in four of Mrs. Clinton’s emails “should never have been transmitted via an unclassified personal system,” the inspectors general determined.
It isn’t clear whether Mrs. Clinton was aware she was sending classified information. “None of the emails we reviewed had classification or dissemination markings,” wrote Inspector General I. Charles McCullough in the letter to Congress.
The joint statement from the inspectors general indicated the referral to the FBI was routine. It said the intelligence community inspector general is required by law “to refer potential compromises of national security information” to appropriate security officials.
The emails in question left government custody and were on both Mrs. Clinton’s personal home email server as well as a thumb drive of David Kendall, Mrs. Clinton’s personal attorney. The concerns about classified information being in private hands led the intelligence community watchdog to alert law-enforcement officials about potential loss of classified information.
Because the information allegedly mishandled in Mrs. Clinton’s email archive remains classified and unavailable to the public, it is difficult to know the severity of the breach.
ENLARGE “Realistically, I don’t think there’s any serious concern about anything criminal in this case,” said Mark Zaid, a lawyer who specializes in national-security law. “But it raises a whole host of administration questions for the State Department and will also have political fallout separate from the legal questions.”
The federal law governing removal of classified information provides for up to a year for prison for “knowingly” mishandling or removing classified information. Most high-profile investigations into the mishandling of classified information have ended in plea agreements without jail time.
Mrs. Clinton’s email arrangement involving a personal server has sparked several lawsuits, a congressional probe and several inspectors general investigations. The arrangement was legal at the time for unclassified information, but discouraged by Obama administration and State Department guidance.
The State Department is facing lawsuits from news organizations and advocacy groups over access to her records, while the Republican-run House committee investigating the Benghazi attacks has repeatedly requested that her email server be turned over to a third party for forensic examination.
Members of Congress immediately seized on the latest disclosure, calling for a renewed investigation into Mrs. Clinton’s email arrangement.
“If Secretary Clinton truly has nothing to hide, she can prove it by immediately turning over her server to the proper authorities and allowing them to examine the complete record,” House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) said in a statement.
Experts on government classification have noted that as head of the State Department, Mrs. Clinton had wide latitude to determine within her own department what information was classified and what information wasn’t. But she also had an obligation to respect classification determinations made by other agencies, including intelligence services and other cabinet departments.
“Within the State Department, her classification authority is supreme. The only caveat to that is that not all the information in the State Department originates within the State Department,” said Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists. “If it comes from CIA or other agencies, she is normally obligated to respect the classification judgments of those agencies.”
The State Department has long played down concerns about the classified material found in Mrs. Clinton’s emails, saying that information is often reclassified. The State Department said on Friday that it didn’t believe any of the emails Mrs. Clinton sent during her time in office contained classified material.
“To our knowledge, none of them needed to be classified at the time,” said Mark Toner, a department spokesman. Mr. Toner acknowledged that the department had determined that many of her emails now contained classified information, but believed it was unclassified at the time.
Thousands of pages of Mrs. Clinton’s emails already have been posted online, and the State Department is reviewing thousands more for public release. In one instance, classified information has already been released to the public, the inspector general found.
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