U.S. Officials Reportedly Probing How Classified Data Got on Hillary Clinton's Emails

At Bloomberg, "U.S. Said to Probe How Classified Data Got on Hillary Clinton’s Server":

U.S. law enforcement officials are investigating how classified material found its way into messages that members of Hillary Clinton’s State Department staff sent to her private e-mail address, according to a U.S. official with knowledge of the inquiry.

The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an investigation still in its early stages, said there is some indication that Clinton aides drew upon a variety of messages in classified information systems to produce summaries and updates of events in Libya and elsewhere and then sent them to Clinton or her aides using a private server.

The official didn’t identify the aides.

This transfer of classified information onto a server not approved to handle sensitive material is a focus of the investigation and could form the basis for a criminal probe to determine just how much classified material was sent - and who prepared and sent it.

A spokesman for the State Department didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Anybody who knowingly e-mailed 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. Clinton, the leading Democratic presidential candidate, isn’t the target of the investigation.

“There’s a responsibility to safeguard classified information,” Michael Hayden, former director of the National Security Agency and CIA, said in a phone interview. Failing to protect such data “could get to a level of negligence that criminal penalties would kick in.”

Inspector General

The probe comes after the inspector general for U.S. intelligence agencies determined that four e-mails on Clinton’s server contained classified information at the time they were sent. The State Department and intelligence agencies now are trying to determine if other material in the e-mails was classified when sent, and whether the data should be classified at all.

Clinton and her aides have said material in her e-mails wasn’t marked as being classified at the time it was sent and received through her server. Law enforcement officials, however, are examining e-mails that contained material known to be classified when sent.

Clinton used a private e-mail system in her home in Chappaqua, New York, while she was secretary of state from 2009 until February 2013. E-mails sent and received by her and top aides that used the system were stored on a server. The Federal Bureau of Investigation took possession of the server on Aug. 12 as part of its investigation.

30,490 E-Mails

Clinton said she turned over paper copies of 30,490 e-mails 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 if they contained classified material.

There are several scenarios in which known classified material could have been improperly transferred, according to Hayden and an intelligence official who asked to remain anonymous to speak about a current investigation.

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.

Another, and possibly more probable, scenario is that those sending e-mails blended data from multiple sources that ultimately included or referenced some classified content.

“What you’re probably talking about is someone typing a message based on multiple sources in their head,” Hayden said.

Still more.