Category Archives: Department of Homeland Security

Hillary’s Server-Gate: Email Hell

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How many servers? How many techs? How many vendors? An epic national security compromise that appears to have no end. But the Hillary hired techs appear to have attempted to use Dark Web tactics and features.

There is a good bet that the FBI by this time has already cracked the erased hard-drive and discovered the contents on the pesky Hillary server and the data, documents and users are being fully investigated. This is investigation is not merely performed by an FBI field office but more it has been assigned to the entire FBI bureau where results and truth are under demand of the intelligence community.

An obscure Bill Clinton domain is noted here.

  1. In part from the Examiner:Hillary Clinton tapped into the vast network of donors cultivated by her family’s foundation to fund one of her first major initiatives as secretary of state: constructing the U.S. pavilion at the 2010 World’s Fair in Shanghai.

    Emails included in the 7,000 pages of records published by the State Department Monday suggest Clinton’s close relationships with corporate executives helped bring in the $61 million needed to build the pavilion.

    Kris Balderston, State’s special representative for global partnerships, led a frantic push to find the sponsors necessary for the expo before it opened in May 2010, relying on many of the same donors that support the Clinton Foundation to pay for the sprawling U.S. exhibit.

    Thirty-nine of the 70 corporate donors to the pavilion were also donors to the Clinton Foundation — a significant portion given that some of the sponsors were Chinese companies.

  2. Beyond Platte River, there were other vendors used by the Clinton Operation where an encryption company was hired and that platform was feeble at best. The server was done a minimum of 3 times.
  3. EXCLUSIVE: Hillary Paid to Hide Identity of the People Running Her Email Server by Breitbart:  Her attempt to hide details about her server has allowed another faceless company access to her classified email information, while doing little to nothing to secure that information from hackers.Clinton’s private email domain clintonemail.com was initially purchased by Clinton aide Eric Hoteham, who listed the Clintons’ Chappaqua, New York home as the contact address for his purchase. But the domain is actually registered to an Internet company designed to hide the true identity of the people running it.

    Clintonemail.com is currently registered to a company called Perfect Privacy, LLC.

    The company has a listed address of 12808 Gran Bay Parkway West in Jacksonville, Florida. But don’t try to get someone from “Perfect Privacy” on the phone. The company merely serves to mask its clients’ personal information by providing its own meaningless contact information on official databases.

    “Did you know that every time you register a domain name, the law requires that your personal information is added to the public “WHOIS” database, where it becomes instantly available to anyone, anywhere, anytime?,” according to the Perfect Privacy website. “Perfect Privacy eliminates these risks by ensuring that your personal information stays private. By signing up for Perfect Privacy when you register your domain, our information is published in the WHOIS database, instead of yours.”

    “We won’t reveal your identity unless required by law or if you breach our Perfect Privacy Service Agreement,” the company explains.

    Perfect Privacy, LLC is owned by Network Solutions, which in turn is owned by Web.com. Network Solutions advertises Perfect Privacy as a way to “Keep Your Contact Information Hidden With Private Registration.”

    The Jacksonville address listed for Perfect Privacy, LLC is actually just the headquarters for Web.com. It is an unassuming gray building just off Interstate 95.

    Breitbart News called a number listed for Network Solutions and, after some on-hold elevator music, an operator confirmed that clintonemail.com is one of the domains that it manages. The company has access to information in the account. But the company does not provide any kind of security for the domain, and instead encourages its clients to buy a standard Norton AntiVirus package like the kind available at retail stores.

    “No, we don’t do that,” a Network Solutions operator told Breitbart News when asked if it provides security for its clients. But, the operator, noted, “Our server automatically checks for known SPAM.”

    Network Solutions, the operator explained, can identify major hacks and can access and change information related to the email account in the event of a hack. The company declined to provide more information without speaking to the domain’s administrator.

    As Breitbart News revealed, Hillary’s email account clintonemail.com was operating with the same IP addresses as presidentclinton.com, an email account managed by the private Clinton Foundation and used by top Clinton Foundation staffers. The IP addresses were based in New York City, meaning that they were sharing the same email network at the same physical location, likely at one of the Clintons’ Midtown Manhtattan offices. Additionally, Chelsea Clinton’s work email account chelseaoffice.com was sharing the same email server.

    wjcoffice.com, an email account used by Bill Clinton staffers, including his former communications director Jay Carson, also shared the same IP address as clintonemail.com.

    Breitbart News has also discovered that clintonemail.com and presidentclinton.com were using the same IP port: port 443.

    That Hillary Clinton shared a server with the Clinton Foundation and the offices of her husband and daughter raises further concerns about the illegality of her private email use, since other Clinton-World employees not affiliated with the State Department certainly had physical access to her server and the classified information on it.

    Hillary’s private server also used the McAfee-owned MXLogic spam-filtering software, which is susceptible to a security breach and which made the information on her server accessible to McAfee employees during the numerous intervals in which her emails were passed through the MXLogic system.

    The server was prone to crashes.

    Hillary Clinton’s private email server went down in February 2010, and the State Department IT team didn’t even know that she was using a private email address, indicating that Clinton Foundation staff was working on her server as opposed to the agency’s IT professionals.

    After the State Department Help Desk sent Clinton’s private email address a routine warning notifying her that her messages were being flagged with fatal errors, Hillary’s top aide Huma Abedin sent the Secretary an email explaining to her what was going on.

    “Ur email must be back up!!,” Abedin wrote. “What happened is judith sent you an email. It bounced back. She called the email help desk at state (I guess assuming u had state email) and told them that. They had no idea it was YOU, just some random address so they emailed. Sorry about that. But regardless, means ur email must be back! R u getting other messages?”

    Hillary’s server went down again during Superstorm Sandy in 2012.

JPOA: Strategic Consequences For U.S. National Security

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What you can know from the military experts that the Democrats that are standing with the White House on the Iran ‘YES’ vote are ignoring.

The full report is here.

Assessment of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action:

By: Co-Chairs General James Conway, USMC (ret.) and General Charles Wald, USAF (ret.)

Strategy Council and Staff

Members

Admiral Mark Fitzgerald, USN (ret.)

Former Commander of U.S. Naval Forces Europe/Africa

General Lou Wagner, USA (ret.)

Former Commander of U.S. Army Materiel Command

Vice Admiral John Bird, USN (ret.)

Former Commander of the U.S. Seventh Fleet

Lt. General David Deptula, USAF (ret.)

Former Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance, U.S. Air Force Headquarters

Maj. General Lawrence Stutzriem, USAF (ret.)

Former Director, Plans, Policy, and Strategy, North American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command

 

We assess:

The JCPOA will not prevent a nuclear Iran. No later than 15 years, the deal’s major nuclear restrictions will lapse, Iran will stand on the brink of nuclear weapons capability, and once again the United States will likely have to devote significant resources and attention to keeping Tehran from attaining nuclear weapons.

  1. The JCPOA will give Iran the means to increase support for terrorist and insurgent proxies, aggravate sectarian conflict and trigger both nuclear and conventional proliferation cascades. It will provide the expansionist regime in Tehran with access to resources, technology and international arms markets required to bolster offensive military capabilities in the vital Persian Gulf region, acquire long-range ballistic missiles and develop other major weapons systems.
  1. Our long-standing allies feel betrayed – even angry – with the JCPOA, seeing it as a weakening of U.S. security guarantees and reversal of decades of U.S. regional security policy. The mere fact that such perceptions persist, regardless of their veracity, will undermine U.S. credibility, threatening to turn them into a self-fulfilling prophecy.
  1. Simultaneously, sequestration is diminishing the ability of the United States to respond to Iranian aggression, mitigate security threats emanating from Iran and protect U.S. regional allies. Leaving it with fewer and older ships and planes as well as fewer and less well-trained troops, these cuts will severely damage the U.S. military’s ability to project power in the region, even as the Iranian threat grows.
  1. The United States is in a far better position to prevent a nuclear Iran today, even by military means if necessary, than when the JCPOA sunsets. The strategic environment will grow much more treacherous in the next 15 years. Comparatively, Iran will be economically stronger, regionally more powerful and militarily more capable, while the United States will have a smaller, less capable fighting force, diminished credibility and fewer allies.

Contrary to the false choice between support for the JCPOA and military confrontation, the agreement increases both the probability and danger of hostilities with Iran. Given the deleterious strategic consequences to the United States, implementation of the JCPOA will demand increased political and military engagement in the Middle East that carries significantly greater risks and costs relative to current planning assumptions.

Improved Iran Military Capabilities

The JCPOA will enable Iran to improve its unconventional military capabilities to challenge the strategic position of the United States and its allies in the Middle East. Iran will be able to revitalize its defense industrial base in the short term, even if it devotes only a fraction of the $100 billion or more that will be unfrozen as part of the agreement – more than the government’s entire budget for the current fiscal year – to military spending. It is also set to acquire advanced S-300 air defenses from Russia at the end of this year. Over the medium term, the removal of economic sanctions and the United Nations arms embargo will allow the regime to acquire other advanced technologies and weapons from abroad. And, once sanctions against its ballistic missile program sunset, Iran could more easily develop weapons capable of reaching targets in the Middle East and beyond – including Europe and the United States.

Iran has historically been at a serious disadvantage against the United States in conventional military power, most notably when the use of overwhelming U.S. force in the region compelled it to reverse course dramatically and agree to a ceasefire in the Iran-Iraq War in 1988 and to suspend its nuclear program in 2003. Indeed, Iran lacks large numbers of sophisticated conventional capabilities, including armored forces, air support and fighter aircraft and large surface ships. This likely will remain true for the foreseeable future.

Despite its deficit in conventional capabilities, Iran poses an asymmetric challenge to U.S. military assets and interests in the region. Iran learned from hard experience that it could not match the United States in a direct military confrontation. It also understands the United States relies heavily on unfettered access to close-in bases across the Middle East to keep the region’s vital and vulnerable sea lanes open, conduct combat operations and deter aggression against its allies. Therefore, it has spent more than a decade pursuing a strategy to disrupt or deter the United States from projecting superior forces into the region, or to prevent those forces from operating effectively if deployed. For example, Iran could seek to do so by sealing off the Persian Gulf at the Strait of Hormuz; degrading U.S. freedom of maneuver and military lines of communication; blocking the flow of oil through the Gulf; and targeting naval and commercial vessels, military bases, energy infrastructure and other vital sites inside and outside the Gulf.

Iran has acquired and developed various capabilities to execute this asymmetric strategy, including anti-access/area denial (A2/AD). It possesses the region’s largest arsenal of short (SRBM) and medium-range (MRBM) ballistic missiles, as well as a growing arsenal of cruise missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), to target military and energy installations throughout the Gulf, including U.S. ships. It also has a sizable fleet of fast attack craft, submarines and large numbers of torpedoes and naval mines for choking off Hormuz and attacking the aforementioned targets. The S-300 air defense systems could stymie U.S. air operations around the Gulf, in addition to complicating any strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Russian or Chinese-sourced anti-ship cruise and ballistic missiles could give Iran an even greater standoff capability, allowing it to target U.S. naval assets beyond the Persian Gulf. Iran is also devoting attention to cyber warfare against the battle networks of U.S. forces and the critical infrastructure of its adversaries in the region.7

Assessment of the JCPOA: Strategic Consequences for U.S. National Security

The JCPOA will provide Iran with access to the resources, technology and international arms markets it needs to execute its asymmetric and A2/AD strategy more effectively. We expect it will take full advantage of the opportunity. Iran could simply make or buy more of what it already has, particularly missiles, launchers, submarines and surface warfare ships. It could also upgrade crucial capabilities. Improved precision guidance systems would enable Iran’s ballistic and cruise missiles to target individual ships and installations around the Gulf much more accurately, as would new missile boats, submarines and mobile launchers. If combined with longer-range radars, it could expand this increased threat across wider swathes of the region. Better UAVs or multirole aircraft – not to mention additional advanced air defenses – could permit it to contest U.S. air supremacy over the region. It could also augment its stealth and electronic and cyber warfare capabilities with new technologies from abroad.

Iran might also invest in entirely new capabilities to disrupt and deter operations not only around its immediate vicinity, but also across the region more broadly. These could include long-range strike, satellite, airlift and sealift capabilities as well as the development of long-range ballistic missiles.

The full 14 page report is here.

 

 

 

Soros and China vs. M1A1’s and F-35’s: Irregular Warfare

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A kinder, gentler weapon, software, economic terrorism and exploiting weakness. What the U.S. military knows and what government leaders know but find difficult to defeat, IRREGULAR WARFARE.

The main protagonist in this section of the history book will not be a statesman or a military strategist; rather, it will be George Soros. Of course, Soros does not have an exclusive monopoly on using the financial weapon for fighting wars. Before Soros, Helmut Kohl used the deutsche mark to breach the Berlin Wall–a wall that no one had ever been able to knock down using artillery shells [see Endnote 13]. After Soros began his activities, Li Denghui [Li Teng-hui 2621 4098 6540] used the financial crisis in Southeast Asia to devalue the New Taiwan dollar, so as to launch an attack on the Hong Kong dollar and Hong Kong stocks, especially the “red-chip stocks.” [Translator’s note: “red-chip stocks” refers to stocks of companies listed on the Hong Kong stock market but controlled by mainland interests.] In addition, we have yet to mention the crowd of large and small speculators who have come en masse to this huge dinner party for money gluttons, including Morgan Stanley and Moody’s, which are famous for the credit rating reports that they issue, and which point out promising targets of attack for the benefit of the big fish in the financial world [see Endnote 14]. These two companies are typical of those entities that participate indirectly in the great feast and reap the benefits.

Soros pours out all his bitterness in his book, The Crisis of Global Capitalism. On the basis of a ghastly account of his investments in 1998, Soros analyzes the lessons to be learned from this economic crisis.

When it comes to the axiom, Know Thy Enemy, China has made an art of this objective. China does so by any means possible with notable success.

In 1999, China used analysts to understand their adversaries such that the primary mission was to achieve a wide set of competitive edges, all under the ethos of ‘Unrestricted Warfare’.

Going beyond the common air or ground war operations, there are countless other methods to gain advantage or defeat others in a competitive world.

A 200 page essay published in 1999 came to the attention of U.S. military leaders. It is a compelling read and germane to conflicts today and well into the future.

Unrestricted Warfare  by Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui 

Qiao Liang is a Chinese Air Force Major in the People’s Liberation Army and co-authored a book titled  ‘Unrestricted Warfare’. The scope of the book is China’s Master Plan to Destroy America.

Meanwhile, if you can stand more, there is Russia. The two countries are using the very same software warfare tactical playbook and it too has not gone unnoticed.

EU sets up unit to counter Russia’s disinformation campaigns

Janes: The EU announced on 27 August that it is forming a small “rapid response” team of officials within the European External Action Service (EEAS) to deal with Russian propaganda.

To be launched on 1 September, the team will monitor Moscow’s propaganda manoeuvres and advise EU and national authorities and their media campaigns accordingly, said EU officials.

The move comes in response to a request in March by EU leaders to Federica Mogherini, the EU’s chief of foreign and security policy, to mount a response to “Russia’s ongoing disinformation campaign”.

The team will be comprised of 8-10 Russian-speaking officials from Sweden, the UK and other countries within the EEAS, the EU’s foreign policy wing.

***

The Cyber War: As tension between the United States, Russia and China continues to escalate, reports of cyber warfare between the nations has become increasingly prominent. Modern warfare can be waged in numerous ways, and it seems that this virtual form of conflict will be an increasing theme as the 21st century develops.

 

The cyber warfare between the United States, Russia and China is part of an overall epoch-defining conflict between the three nations. This is largely based on economic disagreement and rivalry, but has also spilled over into military and territorial disputes as well. Although this war has remained physically peaceful thus far, the potential for future conflict between the three nations remains significant. And with the likes of Edward Snowden revealing the extent of government snooping, we can expect more reports of governmental cyber attacks in the future.

 

More than Half of Immigrants on Welfare

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Contrary to declaration from the White House:

How do immigrants strengthen the U.S. economy? Below is our top 10 list for ways immigrants help to grow the American economy.

  1. Immigrants start businesses. According to the Small Business Administration, immigrants are 30 percent more likely to start a business in the United States than non-immigrants, and 18 percent of all small business owners in the United States are immigrants.
  2. Immigrant-owned businesses create jobs for American workers. According to the Fiscal Policy Institute, small businesses owned by immigrants employed an estimated 4.7 million people in 2007, and according to the latest estimates, these small businesses generated more than $776 billion annually.
  3. Immigrants are also more likely to create their own jobs. According the U.S. Department of Labor, 7.5 percent of the foreign born are self-employed compared to 6.6 percent among the native-born.
  4. Immigrants develop cutting-edge technologies and companies.  According to the National Venture Capital Association, immigrants have started 25 percent of public U.S. companies that were backed by venture capital investors. This list includes Google, eBay, Yahoo!, Sun Microsystems, and Intel.
  5. Immigrants are our engineers, scientists, and innovators. According to the Census Bureau, despite making up only 16 percent of the resident population holding a bachelor’s degree or higher, immigrants represent 33 percent of engineers, 27 percent of mathematicians, statisticians, and computer scientist, and 24 percent of physical scientists. Additionally, according to the Partnership for a New American Economy, in 2011, foreign-born inventors were credited with contributing to more than 75 percent of patents issued to the top 10 patent-producing universities.
  6. Immigration boosts earnings for American workers. Increased immigration to the United States has increased the earnings of Americans with more than a high school degree. Between 1990 and 2004, increased immigration was correlated with increasing earnings of Americans by 0.7 percent and is expected to contribute to an increase of 1.8 percent over the long-term, according to a study by the University of California at Davis.
  7. Immigrants boost demand for local consumer goods. The Immigration Policy Center estimates that the purchasing power of Latinos and Asians, many of whom are immigrants, alone will reach $1.5 trillion and $775 billion, respectively, by 2015.
  8. Immigration reform legislation like the DREAM Act reduces the deficit.  According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, under the 2010 House-passed version of the DREAM Act, the federal deficit would be reduced by $2.2 billion over ten years because of increased tax revenues.
  9. Comprehensive immigration reform would create jobs. Comprehensive immigration reform could support and create up to 900,000 new jobs within three years of reform from the increase in consumer spending, according to the Center for American Progress.
  10. Comprehensive immigration reform would increase America’s GDP.The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found that even under low investment assumptions, comprehensive immigration reform would increase GDP by between 0.8 percent and 1.3 percent from 2012 to 2016.

Report: More than half of immigrants on welfare

USA Today: More than half of the nation’s immigrants receive some kind of government welfare, a figure that’s far higher than the native-born population’s, according to a report to be released Wednesday.

About 51% of immigrant-led households receive at least one kind of welfare benefit, including Medicaid, food stamps, school lunches and housing assistance, compared to 30% for native-led households, according to the report from the Center for Immigration Studies, a group that advocates for lower levels of immigration.

Those numbers increase for households with children, with 76% of immigrant-led households receiving welfare, compared to 52% for the native-born.

The findings are sure to fuel debate on the presidential campaign trail as Republican candidates focus on changing the nation’s immigration laws, from calls for mass deportations to ending birthright citizenship.

Steven Camarota, director of research at the center and author of the report, said that’s a much-needed conversation to make the country’s immigration system more “selective.”

“This should not be understood as some kind of defect or moral failing on the part of immigrants,” Camarota said about the findings. “Rather, what it represents is a system that allows a lot of less-educated immigrants to settle in the country, who then earn modest wages and are eligible for a very generous welfare system.”

Linda Chavez agrees with Camarota that the country’s welfare system is too large and too costly. But Chavez, a self-professed conservative who worked in President Reagan’s administration, said it’s irresponsible to say immigrants are taking advantage of the country’s welfare system any more than native-born Americans.

Chavez said today’s immigrants, like all other immigrant waves in the country’s history, start off poorer and have lower levels of education, making it unfair to compare their welfare use to the long-established native-born population. She said immigrants have larger households, making it more likely that one person in that household will receive some kind of welfare benefit. And she said many benefits counted in the study are going to U.S.-born children of immigrants, skewing the findings even more.

“When you take all of those issues into account, (the report) is less worrisome,” she said.

Chavez, president of the Becoming American Institute, a conservative group that advocates for higher levels of legal immigration to reduce illegal immigration, said politicians should be careful about using the data. Rather than focus on the fact that immigrants are initially more dependent on welfare than the U.S.-born, she said they should focus on studies that show what happens to the children of those immigrants.

“These kids who get subsidized school lunches today will go on to graduate high school … will go on to college and move up to the middle class of America,” Chavez said. “Every time we have a nativist backlash in our history, we forget that we see immigrants change very rapidly in the second generation.”

The center’s report is based on 2012 data from the Census Bureau’s Survey of Income and Program Participation. It includes immigrants who have become naturalized citizens, legal permanent residents, those on short-term visas and undocumented immigrants.

Camarota said one of the most shocking findings from the report was the high number of native-born Americans also on welfare. About 76% of immigrant households with children are on welfare, but so are 52% of native-born households with children.

“Most people have a sense that if you were to work for $10 an hour, 40 hours a week, you couldn’t be receiving welfare, could you? You couldn’t be living in public housing, could you?” he said. “The answer is yes, you can. That’s one of the most surprising things about this study.”

Other findings in the report:

  • Immigrants are more likely to be working than their native-born neighbors. The report found that 87% of immigrant households had at least one worker, compared to 76% for native households.
  • The majority of immigrants using welfare come from Central America, Mexico and the Caribbean. The use of welfare is lower for immigrants from East Asia (32%), Europe (26%) and South Asia (17%).
  • Immigrants who have been in the U.S. more than 20 years use welfare less often, but their rates remain higher than native-born households.

    • If you need some immigration advice, contact a team of immigration lawyers who will help you out.

 

Hillary Server-Gate Operative Pleas 5th?

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From this blog in an earlier post, I mentioned Brain Pagliano and he is in the news again today. Wait for it…..he is fending off a subpoena and will likely plea the Constitutional protection of the 5th Amendment. Will Hillary take down the White House?

Staffer who worked on Clinton’s private e-mail server faces subpoena

Washington Post: A former State Department staffer who worked on Hillary Rodham Clinton’s private e-mail server this week tried to fend off a subpoena to testify before Congress, saying he would assert his constitutional right not to answer questions to avoid incriminating himself.

The move by Bryan Pagliano, who had worked on Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign before setting up the server in her New York home in 2009, came in a Monday letter from his lawyer to the House panel investigating the 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

The letter cited the ongoing FBI inquiry into the security of Clinton’s e-mail system, and it quoted a Supreme Court ruling in which justices described the Fifth Amendment as protecting “innocent men . . . who otherwise might be ensnared by ambiguous circumstances.’ ”

The FBI is investigating whether Clinton’s system — in which she exclusively used private e-mail for her work as secretary of state — may have jeopardized sensitive national security information.

Thousands of e-mails that have been released by the State Department as part of a public records lawsuit show Clinton herself writing at least six e-mails containing information that has since been deemed classified. Large portions of those e-mails were redacted before their release, on the argument that their publication could harm national security.

“While we understand that Mr. Pagliano’s response to this subpoena may be controversial in the current political environment, we hope that the members of the Select Committee will respect our client’s right to invoke the protections of the Constitution,” his attorney, Mark MacDougall, wrote.

Two other Senate committees also have contacted Pagliano in the past week, according to a copy of the letter, which was obtained by The Washington Post. The requests came from the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Homeland Security Committee, according to people familiar with the requests.

The Senate Judiciary Committee confirmed Wednesday that it sought to ask Pagliano about his work for Clinton.

“In response to questions . . . Mr. Pagliano’s legal counsel told the committee yesterday that he would plead the Fifth to any and all questions if he were compelled to testify,” a spokesperson for committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) said in a statement.

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), the chairman of the House Benghazi committee, had subpoenaed the computer staffer Aug. 11 and ordered that he appear for questioning before the committee Sept. 10. Gowdy also demanded that Pagliano provide documents related to the servers or systems controlled or owned by Clinton from 2009 to 2013.

Pagliano, who worked in the State Department’s information-technology department from May 2009 until February 2013, left the agency when Clinton departed as secretary. He now works for a technology contractor that provides some services to the State Department.

The committee’s ranking Democrat, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), complained yesterday that Gowdy unilaterally issued the subpoena. He said the subpoena of a low-level aide is one of several signs that Gowdy is using the committee for the political purpose of trying to smear a Democratic presidential candidate.

“Although multiple legal experts agree there is no evidence of criminal activity, it is certainly understandable that this witness’s attorneys advised him to assert his Fifth Amendment rights, especially given the onslaught of wild and unsubstantiated accusations by Republican presidential candidates, members of Congress and others based on false leaks about the investigation,” Cummings said. “Their insatiable desire to derail Secretary Clinton’s presidential campaign at all costs has real consequences for any serious congressional effort.”

MacDougall declined to comment late Wednesday evening.

Will Hillary Clinton’s Emails Burn the White House?

DailyBeast: Counterintelligence specialists suspect that the former Secretary of State wasn’t the only member of the Obama administration emailing secrets around.
Hillary Clinton’s email problems are already causing headaches for her presidential campaign. But within American counterintelligence circles, there’s a mounting sense that the former Secretary of State may not be the only Obama administration official in trouble. This is a scandal that has the potential to spread to the White House, as well.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation can be expected to be tight-lipped, especially because this highly sensitive case is being handled by counterintelligence experts from Bureau headquarters a few blocks down Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House, not by the FBI’s Washington Field Office. That will ensure this investigation gets the needed “big picture” view, since even senior FBI agents at any given field office may only have a partial look at complex counterintelligence cases.

And this most certainly is a counterintelligence matter. There’s a widely held belief among American counterspies that foreign intelligence agencies had to be reading the emails on Hillary’s private server, particularly since it was wholly unencrypted for months. “I’d fire my staff if they weren’t getting all this,” explained one veteran Department of Defense counterintelligence official, adding: “I’d hate to be the guy in Moscow or Beijing right now who had to explain why they didn’t have all of Hillary’s email.” Given the widespread hacking that has plagued the State Department, the Pentagon, and even the White House during Obama’s presidency, senior counterintelligence officials are assuming the worst about what the Russians and Chinese know.

EmailGate has barely touched the White House directly, although it’s clear that some senior administration officials beyond the State Department were aware of Hillary’s unorthodox email and server habits, given how widely some of the emails from Clinton and her staff were forwarded around the Beltway. Obama’s inner circle may not be off-limits to the FBI for long, however, particularly since the slipshod security practices of certain senior White House officials have been a topic of discussions in the Intelligence Community for years.

Hillary Clinton was far from the only senior Obama appointee to play fast and loose with classified materials, according to Intelligence Community insiders. While most counterspies agree that Hillary’s practices—especially using her own server and having her staffers place classified information into unclassified emails, in violation of Federal law—were especially egregious, any broad-brush investigation into security matters are likely to turn up other suspects, they maintain.

“The whole administration is filled with people who can’t shoot straight when it comes to classified,” an Intelligence Community official explained to me this week. Three U.S. officials suggested that Susan Rice, the National Security Adviser, might be at particular risk if a classified information probe goes wide. But it should be noted that Rice has made all sorts of enemies on the security establishment for her prickly demeanor, use of coarse language, and  strategic missteps.

However, Clinton should take no comfort from the fact that others may be in trouble with the FBI too. Just how many of her “unclassified” emails were actually classified is a matter of dispute that will take months for the FBI to resolve with assistance from the State Department and Intelligence Community. The current figure bandied about, that something like 300 of the emails scanned to date by investigators contained information that should have been marked as classified, is somewhat notional at this point, not least because the Intelligence Community has yet to weigh in on most of them.

Spy agencies typically take a harder line on classification than the State Department does, including a tendency to retroactively mark as classified mundane things—for instance press reports that comment on security matters can be deemed secret—that other, less secrecy-prone agencies might not. That said, there’s little doubt that our intelligence agencies fear that the compromise engendered by Hillary’s email slipshod practices was significant.

Although it will be months before intelligence agencies have reviewed all Clinton emails, counterintelligence officials expect that the true number of classified emails on Hillary’s servers is at least many hundreds and perhaps thousands, based on the samplings seen to date.

Excuses that most of the classified emails examined to date are considered Confidential, which is the lowest level, cut no ice with many insiders. Although the compromise of information at that level is less damaging than the loss of Secret—or worse Top Secret—information, it is still a crime that’s taken seriously by counterintelligence professionals. Most of the classified that Hillary and her staff seem to have compromised dealt with diplomatic discussions, which is a grave indiscretion as far as diplomats worldwide are concerned.

“Of course they knew what they were doing, it’s a clear as day from the emails,” opined one senior official who is close to the investigation. “I’m a Democrat and this makes me sick. They were fully aware of what they were up to, and the Bureau knows it.” That Hillary and her staff at Foggy Bottom were wittingly involved in a scheme to place classified information into ostensibly unclassified emails to reside on Clinton’s personal, private server is the belief of every investigator and counterintelligence official I’ve spoken with recently, and all were at pains to maintain that this misconduct was felonious.

It’s clear that many people inside the State Department had to be aware, at least to some degree, of what Clinton and her inner staff were engaged in. How far that knowledge went is a key question that the FBI is examining. The name Patrick Kennedy pops up frequently. A controversial character, Kennedy is the State Department’s undersecretary for management (hence his Foggy Bottom nickname “M”). A longtime Clinton protégé, Kennedy is believed by many to be the key to this case, since his sign-off likely would have been needed for some of Clinton’s unorthodox arrangements.