Didn’t know e-mails tagged ‘C’ were secret: FBI
Hillary Clinton was so cavalier about security at the State Department that she told FBI agents she had no idea the letter “C” stood for “confidential” in official e-mails.
Time and again in a 3¹/2-hour interview with agents investigating her use of a private e-mail server, the Democratic presidential candidate shrugged off concerns that her digital behavior was endangering the nation’s security, according to notes from the session that the FBI released Friday.
Among the more startling revelation in the 58-page release:
Asked about an e-mail chain containing “C” markings during her tenure as secretary of state, Clinton “speculated it was refer- encing paragraphs marked in alphabetical order” instead of the designation for confidential data.
Clinton didn’t know the difference between the government’s classifications of top secret, secret and confidential. In fact, she told the FBI that she “did not pay attention to the ‘level’ of classification and took all classified information seriously.”
She had 13 cellphones, including 11 smartphones linked to two phone numbers. Eight of the devices were used during her tenure at the State Department.
The feds requested access to the devices, but Clinton’s lawyers were unable to provide any of them. The FBI said Clinton aide Justin Cooper admitted destroying at least two of his boss’s old phones by “breaking them in half or hitting them with a hammer.”
An aide deleted a number of Clinton e-mails from an archived mailbox a few weeks after it was publicly revealed that Clinton had a private e-mail server.
He claimed the timing was only coincidental, telling the FBI that he simply forgot to make the deletion earlier, as planned, and had an “oh, s- -t” moment.
But agents said there was evidence the deletions were not routine because the aide used software called BleachBit to make the emails disappear permanently.
A laptop containing a copy of the e-mails on Clinton’s private server was lost. An aide told the FBI that “Clinton’s staff was moving offices at the time, and it would have been easy for the package to get lost during the transition period.”
A thumb drive containing the second copy of the archive also was never found.
Clinton’s camp said it was pleased the FBI released materials from the July 2 interview, which came after critics called for her to be prosecuted for sending classified data.
“While her use of a single e-mail account was clearly a mistake and she has taken responsibility for it, these materials make clear why the Justice Department believed there was no basis to move forward with this case,” said her spokesman, Brian Fallon.
But the FBI notes left unanswered questions, with about one quarter of the report redacted with many pages containing extensive redactions. In fact, about one quarter of the report was left blank.
The FBI report — which was heavily redacted, with about one quarter of it left blank — also says that 81 of Clinton’s e-mail chains contained information that was classified at the time it was sent.
To date, the FBI has recovered 17,448 unique work-related and personal e-mails that were not provided by Clinton’s attorneys.
Asked by the agents if she was instructed about the preservation of records while leaving office in 2013, Clinton noted that she suffered a concussion in December 2012 and “could not recall every briefing she received.”
Donald Trump said he was “shocked” by the FBI report.
“After reading these documents, I really don’t understand how she was able to get away from prosecution,” he said.
Hillary Clinton was so oblivious to her duty to guard the nation’s secrets that she didn’t even realize that “(C)” in an e-mail header means “confidential.” And that’s just one revelation in the FBI report on its investigation into her abuses.
In addition to the thousands of Clinton e-mails the State Department has found to hold classified data, the FBI ID’d 81 classifed e-mail chains — eight of them “top secret.”
Clinton used at least 13 mobile devices at State. Some were properly destroyed afterward — but others just went missing. She didn’t even know how classification
worked: “Clinton could not give an example of how classification of a document was determined.” And, in one example, she didn’t even realize that “deliberation over a future drone strike” — a highly classified issue — was “cause for concern regarding classification.”
After news broke of her private setup, she tried to completely wipe all her records. In the end, she failed to hand over at least 17,448 work e-mails.
Though she denied it again to the FBI, her goal throughout was plainly to evade the Freedom of Information laws: Whenever anyone else — from Colin Powell to techies at State — noted that a course of action would mean leaving records that might become public, she chose a different path.
In her FBI interview, she “couldn’t recall” any State training or warnings on retaining records, handling classified info or e-mail policies of any kind.
But she was the boss: It was her job to know the rules for protecting the nation’s secrets and leaving a complete record of her work — or at least to hire aides who’d get it done. But she hired enablers who helped keep her secrets without guarding America’s.
In total, the report shows behavior far worse than “extremely careless,” as FBI chief Jim Comey termed it as he recommended against legal charges. Central to the case for mercy was his claim she didn’t “intend” to break the law. Yet his own agents’ report shows that, at the minimum, she just didn’t give a damn what the law required.
“Criminally reckless” is more like it.