Hillary Clinton broke the rules: Our view
Everyone, including Hillary Clinton, now agrees that the newly confirmed secretary of State made a mistake in 2009 when she decided, for the sake of “convenience,” to run her own email system out of her home in Chappaqua, N.Y., rather than use an official State Department email account.
But a new
report by State's inspector general makes clear that within two years, Clinton's bad decision had turned into something far worse: a threat to national security, one that she repeatedly ignored despite multiple warnings.
Warning No. 1: The report, released last week, reveals that in January 2011, hackers were attacking her private server. Twice, the Hillary and Bill Clinton staffer responsible for maintaining the server had to shut it off to protect data held by America's top diplomat and the former president. The staffer notified State Department officials of the attempted hack, and Clinton’s top aides there emailed each other to say that “sensitive” matters should not be discussed with Clinton over email.
Warning No. 2: Two months later, the assistant secretary for diplomatic security sent a memorandum on cybersecurity threats directly to Clinton, warning of a dramatic increase in efforts "to compromise the private home email accounts of senior department officials" in a likely attempt to "gain access to policy documents and personal information that could enable technical surveillance and possible blackmail.” The memo to Clinton warned her that some personal email accounts had already been compromised and had “been reconfigured … to automatically forward copies of all composed emails” to the hackers.
Warning No. 3: That May, Clinton herself suspected that there might have been another hacking incident when she "received an email with a suspicious link." Hours after her aides discussed the issue over email, Clinton received another email with a suspect link, this time from the personal account of the "under secretary of State for political affairs."
Warning No. 4: A month later, the State Department sent a cable to “all diplomatic and consular posts” about the dangers of unsecured personal email accounts. Staffers were ordered to “avoid conducting official Department business from your personal e-mail accounts.” Who signed that cable? Hillary Clinton.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/opini...nspector-general-editorials-debates/85159948/
