NEW YORK – As Hillary Clinton’s IT specialist, Brian Pagliano, invoked the Fifth Amendment more than 125 times in a 90-minute deposition with Judicial Watch attorneys, the Washington-based watchdog released records providing evidence Clinton’s private email server was vulnerable to hackers.
The newly released State Department emails, referenced in the May 2016 State Department inspector general report, also make clear Clinton refused to utilize the State Department’s secure email system because she wanted to deny the State Department access to emails she chose to define as “personal.”
She knew that all emails transmitted via her private server would evade the State Department’s email archiving infrastructure, which was designed to make the messages available to Freedom of Information Act requests.
“The new Hillary Clinton email records show she had zero interest in disclosing her emails to the public as the law requires,” said Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton.
“And the emails show the Obama State Department gave special accommodations to Clinton’s email system, which the agency knew was unsecure, was likely hacked, and was not transparent under FOIA.”
‘Server: basement telephone closet’
A State Department email dated March 17, 2009, made clear State Department officials had identified a server installed in a “basement telephone closet” in Clinton’s private residence.
An email exchange between Clinton’s State Department aide and Clinton dated Nov. 13, 2010, made clear State Department officials were having trouble getting emails Clinton addressed to them on the private server.
In response to Clinton aide Huma Abedin’s suggestion that she and Clinton “should talk about putting you on state email or releasing your email address to the department so you are not going to spam,” Clinton responded, “Let’s get separate address or device but I don’t want any risk of personal being accessible.”
An email dated Aug. 30, 2011, from Clinton aide Monica R. Hanley to Abedin “documents that an email account for Clinton had been set up at SSHRC@state.gov, even though there is no documentation Clinton ever utilized the State Department email system.
In that memo, Harley forwarded to Abedin an email from a State Department email specialist that warned Clinton’s staff about the use of SSHRC@state.gov: “You should be aware that any email would go through the Department’s infrastructure and subject to FOIA searches.”
The newly released emails show the Office of Inspector General had reviewed communications between State Department staff and Clintons’ staff that made clear operational issues continued to affect Clinton’s private email server and the transmission of her email from 2010 through at least October 2012.
Security features disabled
Various complaints expressed in these emails show that at times the private server was “down due to an outage.”
Concerns expressed by State Department staff in the emails ranged from the possibility that a battery in Clinton’s personal Blackberry might be defective to the inability at times to exchange messages for hours.
An email dated Dec. 22, 2010, made clear that in an attempt to resolve operational problems with clintonemail.com, various security features, including both content filtering and anti-virus blocking, were switched off, even though State Department officials realized the risks posed by the temporary fix.
In the chain of messages attached to the Dec. 22, 2010, email, State Department officials acknowledged that the content filtering and anti-virus blocking software being turned off “has blocked malicious content in the recent past.”
Other State Department emails indicated software designed to block phishing emails was switched off as a temporary fix to operational problems with clintonemail.com, making the system vulnerable to computer viruses.
On Jan. 9, 2011, the non-departmental adviser to President Clinton who provided technical support to the Clinton email system notified the secretary’s deputy chief of staff for operations that he had to shut down the Clinton’s private email server because he believed “someone was trying to hack us and while they did not get in i didnt [sic] want to let them have the chance to.”
Later that day, Judicial Watch noted, the adviser again wrote to the deputy chief of staff for operations, “We were attacked again so I shut [the server] down for a few min.”
On Jan. 10, the deputy chief of staff for operations emailed the chief of staff and the deputy chief of staff for planning and instructed them not to email the secretary “anything sensitive” and stated that she could “explain more in person.”
On Sept. 30, 2015, the Associated Press reported Russia-linked hackers tried at least five times to hack into Clinton’s private email account in a phishing attempt in which infected emails posing as speeding tickets were received over four hours early on the morning of Aug. 3, 2011.
The phishing attack was an attempt to infect Clinton’s private email server and transmit her emails to at least three servers overseas, including one in Russia.
Julian Assange, editor in chief of Wikileaks, has threatened to release emails hacked from Clinton’s private email server that he believes could destroy Hillary Clinton’s presidential aspirations.
Separately, the Kremlin has suggested Russian intelligence authorities are in possession of 20,000 emails hacked from Clinton’s private email server that were obtained in 2011 when the Russians began monitoring Romanian computer hacker Marcel Lazar Lehel, aka “Guccifer.”
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