Washington Free Beacon reporter Lachlan Markay explained the significance of his scoop on former secretary of state Hillary Clinton Friday in a radio interview with Tony Katz.
Markay reported on Clinton, when she was secretary of state, signing a non-disclosure agreement laying out criminal penalties for any unauthorized disclosures of classified information, punching a hole in her narrative that she shouldn't take responsibility for classified information passing through her private email server:
A day after assuming office as secretary of state, Clinton signed a Sensitive Compartmented Information Nondisclosure Agreement that laid out criminal penalties for "any unauthorized disclosure" of classified information.
Experts have guessed that Clinton signed such an agreement, but a copy of her specific contract, obtained by the Competitive Enterprise Institute through an open records request and shared with the Washington Free Beacon, reveals for the first time the exact language of the NDA.
"I have been advised that the unauthorized disclosure, unauthorized retention, or negligent handling of SCI by me could cause irreparable injury to the United States or be used to advantage by a foreign nation," the agreement states.
Clinton received at least two emails while secretary of state on her personal email server since marked "TS/SCI"—top secret/sensitive compartmented information—according to the U.S. intelligence community’s inspector general.
"It makes clear that officials who sign this agreement, and everyone who has the security clearance to handle classified information has to sign one, they are responsible for reaching out to department personnel to ensure that they are aware of the classification status of the information they handle," Markay said. "In other words, 'I didn't know it wasn't classified' is not a legitimate excuse because the onus is on you to make sure that you know what the level of classification is for all of the information that you're privy to."
Clinton's frequent defense of her unauthorized possession of top-secret or sensitive compartmented information involved saying it was not marked as classified when it was sent and received on her private server. However, Markay reported that through her signing of the NDA, "it was Clinton’s responsibility to ascertain whether information shared through her private email server was, in fact, classified."
Katz said the NDA's language about misuse of classified information doing "irreparable" damage to the U.S. was effectively "spelling out" what many have charged Clinton with for months.
"I think the negligent handling phrase there is really crucial, because it makes clear that even if you don't intentionally share classified information, if you handle it in a way that does not adequately secure that information from breaches or leaks or things like that, you're still going to be held liable for it, and they spell out pretty clearly the severe consequences that can have for U.S. national security," Markay said. "So this kind of goes to the heart of the criticism that she's been receiving for her personal email server, which was not authorized to handle this level of classification."
Clinton's use of an unauthorized private email server, which first came to light in March, has hurt her honesty levels with the American public, and she has repeatedly insisted that what she did was allowable under State Department rules.