From The Columbus Dispatch [a reputable Ohio newspaper(note i)
******quote***
WASHINGTON — The email painted a vivid picture of a quickly deteriorating situation in Libya’s bloody civil war, complete with snipers, armed forces on the move and diplomatic personnel preparing to evacuate.
The message, dated April 10, 2011, was forwarded to “H,” for Hillary Clinton, then the secretary of state. It came from one of her closest aides, Huma Abedin, who is now vice chairwoman of her presidential campaign.
A U.S. government review of its seven terse paragraphs has led to a probe of how sensitive information got to personal email accounts used by Clinton and some of her top aides and housed on a server at her New York home, according to two officials with knowledge of the inquiry who asked for anonymity. The matter could form the basis for a criminal probe of whether laws for handling classified material were broken.
The FBI-led investigation comes after the inspector general for U.S. intelligence agencies determined that seven emails on Clinton’s server, including the April 2011 one, contained classified information at the time they were sent.
The State Department and intelligence agencies now are trying to determine whether other material in the emails was classified when it was sent.
As the controversy has grown around Clinton’s campaign, the question of how — and in what form — classified information might have been mishandled has moved front and center.
The Huma-to-Hillary email gives a clue.
In this case, and the others known to be in dispute, it isn’t necessarily a question of a Clinton staff member sending classified documents in whole or large passages attached to emails. Abedin’s email contains information from multiple sources, distilled into a situation report sent to Clinton on a Sunday morning.
There are other examples that suggest Clinton aides drew upon a variety of classified information to produce updates of events in Libya and elsewhere and sent them via email, according to the officials familiar with the investigation who asked not to be identified.
Anybody who knowingly emailed classified material to Clinton or her top aides when she was secretary of state could face criminal prosecution, according to current and former U.S. national security officials. Those who inadvertently send or receive classified data could be prosecuted for gross negligence. (note ii)
Clinton, the leading Democratic presidential candidate, isn’t a target of the investigation.
“There’s a responsibility to safeguard classified information,” Michael Hayden, former director of the National Security Agency and Central Intelligence Agency, said. Failing to protect such data “could get to a level of negligence that criminal penalties would kick in.”
Hayden acknowledged that the blending of material can be difficult to prevent. However, he said Clinton shouldn’t have used a private email server that didn’t have government security protections.
Hayden, who was named by then-President Bill Clinton to head the NSA, is an adviser to Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush.
Clinton’s server might have been vulnerable after a Romanian hacker accessed the personal email of Clinton adviser Sidney Blumenthal in March 2013, according to one of the officials familiar with the probe. Blumenthal frequently emailed Clinton, and although the hack could have exposed the domain name of her server and her IP address, the State Department never conducted a security survey of the server, said the official.
Clinton said she turned over paper copies of 30,490 emails relating to government business from her tenure. Government screeners have flagged 305 of those documents for further review by U.S. intelligence agencies to see whether they contained classified material.(note iii)
There are several scenarios in which known classified material could have been improperly transferred, according to Hayden and one of the U.S. officials who asked for anonymity.
The most egregious way would be to knowingly strip classification markings from documents or other data, a move that would clearly be a criminal act.
A more probable scenario is that those sending emails blended data from multiple sources that ultimately included or referenced classified content.
“What you’re probably talking about is, someone typing a message based on multiple sources in their head,” Hayden said.
***endquote***
note i: technically, it's just a Bloomberg News story picked up by the newspaper
note ii: This addresses the "claim" that nothing on the private server was classified when it was sent/received. If a Clinton aide, e,g, Huma Abedin, or confidante e.g. Sidney Blumenthal, composed an e-mail that should have been classified, . . . like f'rinstance information pertaining to the movements of the Libyan ambassador, . . . and sent it without a classification, they may face criminal prosecution or gross negligence charges.
Someone stating that a communication was not classified when it was received, because it wasn't marked classified, may be mistaken or intentionally obfuscating.
Here's a military analogy: if, say, the Commanding General in theater gets on an insecure telephone and states that he is, f'rinstance, "on the outskirts of Ramadi". that General has violated security, because his location is classified. Or if he sends such a statement to an unsecured server.
note iii: As it turns out the 30,490 e-mails which Secretary Clinton Turned over to the State department in paper form were also contained in the Secretary's private attorney's thumb drive. Any possible classified data was thus retained in the lawyer's office, not an approved safe location. Oh, and DonDiego wonders, . . . since the 30,490 e-mails were already saved in a thumb drive, why didn't the Secretary just turn over the electronic copies along with the paper copies? DonDiego does have an opinion on this matter.
So that's where things stand.
DonDiego opines if criminal, or even just sufficiently negligent behavior, is proven in this matter Secretary Clinton will not be nominated by the Democrat Party.
If the investigation continues with ever-more revelations of misbehaviors of one-sort-or-another dribbling out for an extended period, the Democrat Leadership may at some point conclude that Secretary Clinton is likely unelectable, . . . and suggest she discontinue her campaign.
For the record, if Secretary Clinton were to be nominated DonDiego is unlikely to vote for her unless her opponent were a known terrorist, an avowed Communist or Socialist or Dictator, or someone of such low character as to be even less honest and trustworthy than the Secretary, . . . someone whom DonDiego cannot imagine at the moment.
