The Clinton Email Server Contained Material Above Top Secret, IG Review Reveals
Hillary Clinton takes questions from Fox News’ Ed Henry in New Hampshire Tuesday amid reports the FBI believes someone tried to wipe the server.
A letter sent on Jan. 14 from Intelligence Community Inspector General I. Charles McCullough III contains the smoking gun in the scandal involving Hillary Clinton’s ongoing email scandal. The letter reveals Clinton had material from the U.S. government’s most secretive and highly classified programs, according to a new report from FOX News.
McCullough’s letter outlines the conclusions drawn from a recent review PPD learned of and reported on back in December. But, the recent report claims that review also found specific intelligence known as “special access programs” (SAP). The SAP designation is on a level of classification beyond “top secret.”
“To date, I have received two sworn declarations from one [intelligence community] element. These declarations cover several dozen emails containing classified information determined by the IC element to be at the confidential, secret, and top secret/sap levels,” said the IG letter to lawmakers with oversight of the intelligence community and State Department. “According to the declarant, these documents contain information derived from classified IC element sources.”
As PPD previously reported, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is expanding their investigation into Hillary Clinton to include “public corruption” with the Clinton Foundation during her tenure as secretary of state. The FBI had been previously investigating Mrs. Clinton’s use of a private email server to conduct official State Department business, but now they have begun to scrutinize whether she inappropriately used her role to benefit the foundation.
In prior reports, PPD’s sources explained there are roughly a thousand emails the FBI has identified as problematic. Two specific emails were deemed top secret classified “at birth,” by the originating agencies, including a satellite image showing the movement of North Korean missiles and a top secret U.S. drone strike. The sources said that the dispute over whether the two emails were classified at the highest level at birth–which is Mrs. Clinton’s political defense–is a “settled matter.” Further, those with knowledge of the investigation who spoke with PPD were quick to point out that a political defense is not a criminal defense.
The agencies that owned and originated the intelligence–the CIA and National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, or NGA–reviewed the emails in December to determine how they should be properly stored. The emails reviewed during the investigation by McCullough were marked “top secret” when they hit Clinton’s server, one of them remains “top secret” even to this day.
Fox News also reported that the IG letter was sent to the leadership of the House and Senate intelligence committees and leaders of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, as well as the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and State Department inspector general. The latter is noteworthy, as the State Department continues to challenge the intelligence community’s conclusions. Unfortunately for Mrs. Clinton, the State Department has no authority to change or challenge the classification because the emails and content in question did not originate at their agency.
More from FOX News:
Executive Order 13526 — called “Classified National Security Information” and signed Dec. 29, 2009 — sets out the legal framework for establishing special access programs. The order says the programs can only be authorized by the president, “the Secretaries of State, Defense, Energy, and Homeland Security, the Attorney General, and the Director of National Intelligence, or the principal deputy of each.”
The programs are created when “the vulnerability of, or threat to, specific information is exceptional,” and “the number of persons who ordinarily will have access will be reasonably small and commensurate with the objective of providing enhanced protection for the information involved,” it states.
According to court documents, former CIA Director David Petraeus was prosecuted for sharing intelligence from special access programs with his biographer and mistress Paula Broadwell. At the heart of his prosecution was a non-disclosure agreement where Petraeus agreed to protect these closely held government programs, with the understanding “unauthorized disclosure, unauthorized retention or negligent handling … could cause irreparable injury to the United States or be used to advantage by a foreign nation.” Clinton signed an identical non-disclosure agreement Jan. 22, 2009.
