Tuesday during FBI Director James Comey’s announcement that there will be no federal charges against presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton for her handling of classified information on her private email server, the Comey did say Clinton and her State Department staff were “were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.”
Comey said, “Now let me tell you what we found. although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information. For example, seven email chains concern matters that were classified at the top secret special access program at the time they were sent and received. Those chains involved Secretary Clinton both sending e-mails about those matters, and receiving e-mails about those matters. There is evidence to support a conclusion that any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton’s position or in the position of those with whom she was corresponding about those matters should have known that unclassified systems was no place for a place of that conversation. In addition to this highly sensitive information, we also found information that was properly classified as secret by the intelligence community at the time it was discussed on email, excluding any later unclassified e-mails.”
“None of these e-mails should have been on any kind of unclassified system, but their presence is especially concerning because all of these emails were housed on unclassified personal servers, not supported by full-time security staff like those found at agencies and departments of the U.S. government, or even with a commercial email service,” he continued. “I think it is also important to say something about the marking of classified information. only a very small number of e-mails here containing classified information or markings that indicated the presence of classified information. Even if information is not marked classified in an e-mail, participants who know or should know that the subject matter is classified are still obligated to protect it. While not the focus of our investigation, we also developed evidence that the security culture of the State Department in general and with respect to the use of unclassified systems in particular was generally lacking in the kind of care for classified information found elsewhere in the U.S. government.”
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