Category Archives: War Commentary

Hillary’s Latest Email Problems

John Schindler deconstructs the Gray Lady’s attempt to whitewash:

At the National Security Agency—where I used to work as a senior intelligence analyst, including as the technical director of NSA’s largest operational division—what outsiders call hacking is handled by a shadowy group called Tailored Access Operations that gets at the hard targets requiring actual cyber-break-ins. TAO are probably the best hackers on earth, but Russia and China are no slouches either, as demonstrated by their repeated infiltrations into protected U.S. Government computer networks in recent years.

However, unencrypted IT systems don’t need “hacking”—normal SIGINT interception will suffice. Ms. Clinton’s “private” email, which was wholly unencrypted for a time, was incredibly vulnerable to interception, since it was travelling unprotected on normal commercial networks, which is where SIGINT operators lurk, searching for nuggets of gold.

They hunt for data with search terms called “selectors”—a specific phone number, a chatroom handle, an email address: here Ms. Clinton’s use of the “clintonmail.com” server was the SIGINT equivalent of waving a huge “I’m right here” flag at hostile intelligence services. Since the number of spy agencies worldwide capable of advanced SIGINT operations numbers in the many dozens, with Russia and China in the top five, that Ms. Clinton’s emails wound up in the wrong hands is a very safe bet, as any experienced spy will attest.

The amount of ignorance on this issue spouted by her defenders is both staggering and terrifying.

Hillary’s Email Problems

aren’t going to go away:

All this angers Americans with experience in our military and intelligence services who understand what Ms. Clinton and her staff did—and that they would be held to far harsher standards for attempting anything similar. They know that brave Americans have given their lives protecting Top Secret Codeword information. They know that in every American embassy around the world, our diplomatic outposts that worked for Hillary Clinton, Marine guards have standing orders to fight to the death to protect the classified information that’s inside those embassies. That Hillary Clinton gave similar information away, by choice, is something she needs to explain if she expects to be our next Commander-in-Chief.

She has no explanation, at least not one that doesn’t make it look even worse.

[Update a few minutes later]

Her disregard wasn’t casual. It was a conscious and involved scheme to avoid the Freedom of Information Act, and possibly also Obama Administration scrutiny of her actions. She put the nation as a whole at risk, along with individual lives of intelligence sources, for political reasons: to avoid accountability.”

As she’s been doing, and gotten away with, for decades. Why wouldn’t she assume that she’d continue to not be held to account?

[Update a while later]

The FBI director would like to indict both Clinton and Abedin.

Analysis: Likely.

Hillary’s Server

..had emails on it containing information beyond top secret.

After what happened to Petraeus (and is currently happening), if she isn’t indicted for this, it will be beyond a travesty. And the end of the rule of law in this country.

[Update a few minutes later]

And the State Department has “found” thousands of new documents under FOIA from Judicial Watch.

[Update a while later]

Good lord, the IG had to be read into the program in order to read the emails.

I’m sure that the media is thrilled that Sarah Palin is endorsing Trump today, so they don’t have to report on this.

[Friday-morning update]

Michael Mukasey’s take: A criminal charge is justified. More than one, I’d say.

[Bumped]

[Afternoon update]

Hillary’s unsecured server may have exposed a human intelligence asset.