State Department Officials Routinely Sent Secrets Over Email

The transmission of now-classified information across Hillary Rodham Clinton’s private email is consistent with a State Department culture in which diplomats routinely sent secret material on unsecured email during the past two administrations, according to documents reviewed by The Associated Press.

Clinton’s use of a home server makes her case unique and has become an issue in her front-running campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. But it’s not clear whether the security breach would have been any less had she used department email. The department only systematically checks email for sensitive or classified material in response to a public records request.

Clinton insists she didn’t send or receive classified information. But government officials have found material they deem classified in several dozen of 30,000 emails that the former secretary of state has turned over, an unfolding saga that has dogged her 2016 campaign.

Many of the emails to Clinton containing classified information were forwarded to her by a close aide, Huma Abedin. Most, however, originated with diplomats who have access to confidential material. Some emails sent by Clinton have since been censored.

Such slippage of classified information into regular email is “very common, actually,” said Leslie McAdoo, a lawyer who frequently represents government officials and contractors in disputes over security clearances and classified information.

What makes Clinton’s case different is that she exclusively sent and received emails through a home server in lieu of the State Department’s unclassified email system. Neither would have been secure from hackers or foreign intelligence agencies, so it would be equally problematic whether classified information was carried over the government system or a private server, experts say.

In fact, the State Department’s unclassified email system has been penetrated by hackers believed linked to Russian intelligence.

Many of the emails to Clinton came from state.gov email accounts, noted Steven Aftergood, an expert on classification at the Federation of American Scientists. “So if there is routine security screening and monitoring of incoming and outgoing State Department emails, anything that is classified should have been flagged. That does not seem to have happened. I think it’s the State Department culture.”

This article appeared in print on page 3 of the August 27th, 2015 edition of Hamodia.