An exclusive report by Fox News indicates Hillary Clinton was not the only individual passing top secret classified intelligence through her home-brewed email server. As many as twelve different email accounts saw top secret intel.
Fox News reports:
At least a dozen email accounts handled the “top secret” intelligence that was found on Hillary Clinton’s server and recently deemed too damaging for national security to release, a U.S. government official close to the review told Fox News.The official said the accounts include not only Clinton’s but those of top aides – including Cheryl Mills, Huma Abedin, Jake Sullivan and Philippe Reines – as well as State Department Under Secretary for Management Patrick Kennedy and others.A second source not authorized to speak on the record said the number of accounts involved could be as high as 30 and reflects how the intelligence was broadly shared, replied to, and copied to individuals using the unsecured server.The State Department recently confirmed that the messages in question include the most sensitive kind of intelligence. On Jan. 29, Fox News first reported that some emails on Clinton’s server were too damaging to release in any form. The State Department subsequently announced that 22 “top secret” emails were being withheld in full; these were the messages being handled by more than a dozen accounts.
In September, I wrote:
Was there a concerted conspiracy to violate the law, particularly given the fact that Clinton opted for a private email on her person server? Who else knew classified information was being transmitted outside of government purview?If any of these suspicions are confirmed throughout the course of the FBI’s investigation, will aides then be offered legal concessions if they cooperate?What were once Clinton’s closest lackeys may end up being her downfall.
But I imagined one, maybe two were in on the let’s share classified intel via personal email account jig, not TWELVE.
Fox also reported that contrary to what State Department Under Secretary for Management Patrick Kennedy told the House Select Committee on Benghazi, he was aware Hillary’s personal email use included work related correspondence.
Kennedy recently told the House Benghazi Select Committee that he knew about Clinton’s personal email account from the beginning, but did not understand the “scope,” thinking it was for reaching husband Bill Clinton and their daughter Chelsea — and not for the exclusive handling of State Department business. Kennedy’s testimony appears to conflict with emails released through the Freedom of Information Act that show he routinely sent and received government business from the Clinton account.Fox News has asked the State Department to comment on the email accounts that shared the highly classified information, and how it was that Kennedy did not understand the “scope” of Clinton’s personal email being used for government business. A spokesman for the intelligence community inspector general, which has been reviewing the classification of the Clinton server emails, had no comment.
Earlier this month, Judicial Watch obtained emails through the Freedom of Information Act that showed the State Department working with Clinton on plans for a hidden IT network that would bypass regular DOS protocols.
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:”
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