Clinton Had Plans to Use Hidden IT Network to Bypass State Department Rules

Helping with those plans? State Department officials.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye Monday, February 1, 2016 at 06:00pm 19 Comments

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Judicial Watch obtained records that could implicate State Department officials in Hillary Clinton’s ongoing email scandal. According to those records, State Department officials planned to provide Clinton with a non-DOS computer.

Judicial Watch announced today that it recently received records from the Department of State disclosing plans by senior State Department officials to set up a “stand-alone PC” so that Clinton could check her emails in an office “across the hall” through a separate, non-State Department computer network system. Referencing the special Clinton computer system, Under Secretary for Management Patrick F. Kennedy, writes Clinton Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills, “The stand-alone separate network PC is a great idea.” The emails are from January 23-24, 2009, a few days after Clinton was sworn in as Secretary of State.

The new emails were obtained by Judicial Watch in response a court order in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit for State Department records about Hillary Clinton’s separate email system (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:15-cv-00689)).

In the email chain, Lewis Lukens, former deputy assistant secretary of state and executive director of the secretariat, responds to a request from Mills by informing her, top Clinton aide Huma Abedin, and Kennedy that the new personal computer “in the secretary’s office” would be “connected to the internet (but not through our system).” Abedin responds, “We are hoping for that if possible.”

The email exchange discussing plans to provide Clinton a separate computer to skirt the internal State Department computer network begins with a message from Mills to Lukens in which she requests Clinton being able to access her emails through “a non-DOS computer.” The email discusses how the stand-alone computer can be set up and why it is “a great idea’ and “the best solution:”

The correspondence:

From: Cheryl Mills
Sent: Friday, January 23, 2009 6:45 AM
To: Lukens, Lewis A
Subject: Re: Series of questions

Lew – who can I talk to about:

Can our email be accessed remotely through the web using a non-DOS computer like my laptop?
I am traveling to the M-E – will my DOS bb work there and is there a cell phone attached?
Spoke to Dan [Daniel B. Smith, former DOS executive secretary] re: bb for HRC (and reports that POTUS is able to use a super encrypted one which)
Spoke to Dan re: setting up Counselor office for HRC so she can go across hall regularly to check her email
***

From: Lukens, Lewis A
To: cmills [REDACTED]
Cc: Habedin [REDACTED]; Kennedy, Patrick F; Smith, Daniel B
Sent: Saturday, Jan. 24, 19:10:33 2009
Subject: Re: series of questions

We have already started checking into the NSA bb. Will set up the office across the hall as requested. Also, I think we should go ahead (but will await your green light) and set up a stand-alone PC in the Secretary’s office, connect to the internet (but not through our system) to enable her to check her emails from her desk. Lew.

From: Kennedy, Patrick F [email protected]
To: Lukens, Lewis A ; Cheryl Mills
Cc: Huma Abedin; Smith, Daniel B
Sent: Sat, Jan 24 19:48:25 2009
Subject: Re: Series of questions

Cheryl

The stand-alone separate network PC is [a] great idea

Regards

Pat

From: Huma Abedin
To: Kennedy, Patrick F; Lukens, Lewis A; Cheryl Mills
Cc: Huma Abedin; Smith, Daniel B
Sent: Sat Jan 24 19:48:27 2009
Subject: Re: Series of questions

Yes we were hoping for that if possible so she can check her email in her office.

***

From: Lukens, Lewis A
Sent: Saturday, January 24, 2009 8:26 PM
To: Kennedy, Patrick F
Subject: Re: Series of questions

I talked to Cheryl about this. She says a problem is hrc does not know how to use a computer to do email – only bb [Blackberry]. But, I said would not take much training to get her up to speed.

Meanwhile:

Hmmm.

Bill Clinton on HRC's chances in NH: "It depends on what happens in the next few days and how people react to unfolding events."

— Brian Wilson (@BrianWilsonDC) February 1, 2016

Follow Kemberlee on Twitter @kemberleekaye

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19 Comments

2016 Democratic Primary, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Email Scandal

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2016 Democratic Primary, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Email Scandal

Comments

TX-rifraph | February 1, 2016 at 6:39 pm

What amazes me is that regardless of how many flies are swarming around the Clintons, they can always “sweeten” the pile and attract more flies.

There is no bottom to Hillary’s corruption and dishonesty. The only limit appears to be how much we know on a given date.

What kind of political party and what kind of person would support such moral trash for POTUS?

sjf_control in reply to TX-rifraph. | February 1, 2016 at 8:23 pm

“What kind of political party … would support such moral trash for POTUS?”

The Democrat kind…

markinct | February 1, 2016 at 6:42 pm

And yet there will be no indictment.

randian in reply to markinct. | February 1, 2016 at 10:48 pm

You can prove there was a plan to do it, but likely can’t prove they actually did it. No doubt any really incriminating emails have been deleted by the State Department before release.

DaveGinOly in reply to randian. | February 2, 2016 at 12:59 am

No,it’s worse than that. When he said there’ll be no indictment, he means it’s public knowledge that HRC did certain things that are illegal – she received and sent classified information on a network not authorized to carry such traffic, she improperly stored classified information, and she illegally retained classified information after leaving office. Several other offenses that require proof that will be ferreted out, like “Did various person who HRC directed to root around on her private server after leaving office have the proper clearances to work with the classified information stored on it?”, will also be slam dunks.

The question is “Will she be indicted for these slam-dunks?”, not “Will she be indicted over the marginal, fuzzy stuff?”

dunce1239 | February 1, 2016 at 6:59 pm

She is pictured with a coarse chain around her neck, it reminds me that she is a menace to society and belongs in strong chains.

irv | February 1, 2016 at 8:15 pm

Compared to some of what she’s done, this seems almost innocuous. (Years ago, when Bill was president, how many times did I say similar things? Sigh)

Whiskey Bravo | February 1, 2016 at 9:25 pm

We end up getting the government we truly deserve.

Indeed.

It’s like being shackled to a hurtling death machine.

Romey | February 1, 2016 at 9:46 pm

How much will be enough? Will the right people ever find out? Somehow I doubt it.

c0cac0la | February 2, 2016 at 12:09 am

As someone who has a good understanding of computer networks and security, this is really a non-issue.

It’s most likely that the DOS network is heavily locked down and in order to access outside resources such as an e-mail server would require the IT guys to make exceptions to their firewalls. This actually is a better solution since it doesn’t require making exceptions and creates an isolated network that’s not connected to the DOS network.

If whoever uses this non-DOS computer decides to transmit sensitive data over this computer, then it’s the fault of that person which is entirely another matter. The whole point of the setup is to achieve two things.

1. bypass the DOS firewalls w/o comprising it
2. Keeping the network isolated from the DOS network. The reason for this is that if this computer gets hacked, it would have no access to the DOS network.

This is actually a perfectly reasonable plan and nothing malicious about it. If anyone has worked in a corporate environment and needed to access external resources, you would completely understand why they did what they did.

TX-rifraph in reply to c0cac0la. | February 2, 2016 at 4:01 am

“As someone who has a good understanding of computer networks and security, this is really a non-issue.”

Except the issue is a moral and character issue, not a technical issue. It is very serious.

Rabel in reply to c0cac0la. | February 2, 2016 at 12:12 pm

I think you’re missing the point. The emails which Hillary wished to access through a separate, non-DOS computer were the ones on her personal server which was set up before the date of these messages. She could have accessed those through State’s non-classified system but that access would have passed through State’s servers and created a possibly recoverable record. This was a part of her effort to avoid public and governmental scrutiny of her work product as SOS and proves that Hillary’s aides (and the State Department at some level) were involved in assisting that effort despite their initial claims of ignorance.

ss396 in reply to c0cac0la. | February 2, 2016 at 12:36 pm

It IS in issue in that it was “a perfectly reasonable plan and nothing malicious about it” but it was NOT adopted by the Secretary or by her staff. Why not? Why did she insist on her home-brew service despite its compromised security?

She could have complied to all protocols just by using the established State Department systems, but she refused to.

She could have complied to all protocols by using the alternate system proposed by the State Department, but she refused to.

The system is not the issue; it’s her refusal to be bound by such that is the issue.

Rabel in reply to ss396. | February 2, 2016 at 1:08 pm

“She could have complied to all protocols by using the alternate system proposed by the State Department, but she refused to.”

The “alternate system proposed by the State Department” was not an alternate email system but rather a means to access her home-brew server while avoiding any existing DOS system. So she would not have complied to all protocols by accepting the non-DOS computer discussed in the emails cited in the post.

That’s a bit hard to pick up from Kaye’s post, but it’s clear if you understand that the home-brew server was already set up at the time of this proposal.

Henry Bowman in reply to c0cac0la. | February 2, 2016 at 1:49 pm

These situations arise fairly frequently, and the usual solution is to access the main network (in this case, the DOS network) using a VPN to access the unclassified DOS network. There’s nothing terribly wrong with that at all. However, no classified information should ever be transmitted over the VPN, ever.

I’m sure the Hildebeest knew this full well and simply ignored the rules, as rules are meant for the little people.

DaveGinOly | February 2, 2016 at 12:49 am

A non-DOS computer? I haven’t used a DOS computer since Windows 3.11 for Workgroups.

georgfelis in reply to DaveGinOly. | February 2, 2016 at 1:00 am

Ahem. Department Of State. DOS.

Obie1 | February 2, 2016 at 8:04 am

All the illegalities aside, the fact that she couldn’t figure out email means that she is way too stupid for any office.

dmi60ex | February 2, 2016 at 3:51 pm

She would have figured it out pretty quick if there was graft to be had.

Clinton Had Plans to Use Hidden IT Network to Bypass State Department Rules