Amazing: Cheryl Mills Emailed Classified Information to Officials at The Clinton Foundation

The Clinton Foundation is, legally, a private organization with absolutely no status allowing it to legally receive classified US information. It is not, as a legal matter, what as Hillary Clinton imagines it to be, which is Hillary's Shadow Government In Waiting.

But she treats it like it was just that.

Hillary treated the United States' national intelligence apparatus as if it were simply the research staff of her fundraising operation.

Hillary Clinton’s No. 2 at the State Department twice forwarded information to the Clinton Foundation that was later deemed classified, the latest instance of former Clinton staff transmitting now-classified information.

According to a new email chain shared with POLITICO by Citizens United, Cheryl Mills -- Clinton's former chief of state at State -- forwarded State Department background information about Rwanda and the Congo to the Clintons' philanthropic organization. Citizens United, a conservative activist group, obtained the messages via a Freedom of Information act lawsuit.

Former President Bill Clinton was visiting Africa, including Rwanda, around the time that Mills sent the email, which was mostly redacted. Former president Clinton was also considering giving Rwandan President Paul Kagame a plenary role at the Clinton Global Initiative, according to the emails.

...

The information in the 2012 emails was classified by the State Department in July of this year because of national security and foreign policy reasons, according to the documents. The classification specifically related to foreign government information and intelligence activities, sources or methods, according to the redaction labels.

Note that sources and methods is usually considered the very most sensitive form of intelligence, because it directly exposes where we're getting this information.

So it should have been obvious this information was "born classified." But even if this somehow weren't obvious, that doesn't matter. Ed Morrissey writes:

Mills' defenders -- both formal and informal -- will argue that Mills didn't intend on transmitting classified information, and that is was either not classified at the time or at least not marked so in the originating materials. None of this is a defense against 18 USC 793, which nowhere requires classification to prosecute. Besides, the kind of information suggested by the redaction would obviously be sensitive enough to protect, and certainly not to be shared with uncleared and unauthorized personnel at a politically connected non-profit. This is precisely what security briefings tell people with clearances not to do. No one at any level would fail to grasp the risks and legal implications of these actions, and certainly not at the high level of clearance employed at the top of the State Department.

Turns out, Hillary had two personal intelligence services working for her: The Osprey Group of ex-CIA types headed by Tyler Drumheller, and the entire United States intelligence community.

Meanwhile, the FBI has seized -- or "reached out for," as Gabe likes to joke -- four State Department servers in its ongoing "reaching out" to Hillary Clinton.

The FBI has seized four State Department computer servers as part of its probe into how classified information was compromised on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private email system, according to people familiar with the investigation.

The four servers, which were located at the State Department's headquarters building, were seized by the FBI several weeks ago. They are being checked by technical forensic analysts charged with determining how Top Secret material was sent to Clinton's private email by State Department aides during her tenure as secretary from 2009 to 2013, said two people familiar with the probe...

What they are surely interested in is how the ultra-classified information "jumped the air gap" from the Sensitive Compartmental Information Facility, closed off from the internet, to Hillary's email. How was it smuggled from an ultra-secure isolated room to the internet, where it could be sent around the world at the touch of a button?

The State Department uses two separate networks, one for classified information and one for unclassified information. The two networks are kept separate for security reasons. Most classified networks are equipped with audit systems that allow security managers to check who has accessed intelligence or foreign policy secrets.

The FBI is trying to determine the origin of the highly classified information that was found in Clinton emails....

The FBI is primarily concerned with trying to determine how Top Secret information made its way on to the private server.

I know I keep saying this, but seriously: Hillary is one very special lady.

Some Americans are starting to notice, and Americans aren't a particularly observant people. But they seem to have figured out just how special this lady is.

posted by Ace at 02:11 PM

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