The FBI is reportedly probing whether Hillary Clinton’s top aides at the State Department "cut and pasted" information from the government’s classified networks to send it to her personal email.
The New York Post reported:
Clinton and her top aides had access to a Pentagon-run classified network that goes up to the Secret level, as well as a separate system used for Top Secret communications. The two systems--the Secret Internet Protocol Router Network (SIPRNet) and the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System (JWICS)--are not connected to the unclassified system, known as the Non-Classified Internet Protocol Router Network (NIPRNet). You cannot email from one system to the other, though you can use NIPRNet to send emails outside the government. Somehow, highly classified information from SIPRNet, as well as even the super-secure JWICS, jumped from those closed systems to the open system and turned up in at least 1,340 of Clinton’s home emails.
Some of Clinton’s emails contained information from the government’s highly secret "special access programs" (SAP), intelligence that is more sensitive than that labeled "top secret." That revelation was spelled out in a recent letter from the intelligence community inspector general to top lawmakers about the "several dozen" classified emails held on Clinton’s personal server.
Fox News, which first reported the letter, later revealed that at least one of the emails on Clinton’s private server exposed intelligence from human spying.
Former State Department Security Special Agent Raymond Fournier told the Post that Clinton’s communications made public by the State Department indicate that one of her aides "cut and pasted" information from the classified system into emails that were sent to her personal account. He called the action, which removed the emails’ classified markings, "totally illegal."
Clinton has repeatedly insisted that she never sent nor received information marked classified on her personal email. According to Fournier, the classified nature of the emails--even without classification markings--"would have been obvious to Clinton" because of their content.
The FBI is reportedly focusing on three top Clinton aides, namely Cheryl Mills, Huma Abedin, and Jake Sullivan. A recent exchange between Clinton and Sullivan released by the State Department showed the former secretary of state directing the aide to send her information using "nonsecure" channels.
Last August, an unnamed State Department official told Fox News that someone from Clinton’s "inner circle" likely cleared emails of their classification markings.