The head of the National Security Agency, Admiral Michael Rogers, admitted to the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday that if his agency knew a top foreign official was using such a PleaseHackMe.com email address, they would have pounced on it.
“From a foreign intelligence perspective, that would represent opportunity,” said Rogers, as transcribed by The Hill.
He described such an insecure email server as a “top priority for foreign intelligence services,” under question from Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR).
Anyone familiar with cyber-espionage knows that foreign hackers very likely broke into Clinton’s server. It was kept secret from Congress, the American people, and much of the State Department, but every foreign intel service on Earth would have known if its existence almost immediately.
Clinton and her aids were using email addresses that ended with “ClintonEmail.com,” for crying out loud. Inspector Clouseau would have been able to figure out she wasn’t using the secure State Department system.
Rogers also made it clear he was very uncomfortable discussing the Clinton email scandal. That should tell you volumes about how bad the intelligence community knows this is.
The Hill says Rogers drew chuckles from the audience by groaning, “Do you really want to drag me into this one, sir?” when Cotton questioned him about ClintonNationalSecurityBreach.com.
Sure, the notion of asking our nation’s top cyber-espionage people about Clinton’s server might strike some people as funny, but those people should never be entrusted with the slightest bit of influence over our national security. This is a deadly serious issue. The laws, agency directives, and presidential executive orders Clinton ignored in her reckless drive for zero transparency are there for good reasons. For that matter, so are the laws that say high officials don’t get to have zero transparency.
Cotton’s examples of foreign officials who would be serving the NSA a hot lunch by setting up private email servers included Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov and Iranian foreign minster Mohammad Javad Zarif. That’s much funnier than Rogers cracking wise about preferring to avoid the subject. Lavrov and Zarif would never be foolish enough to do what Hillary Clinton did, and they sure as hell wouldn’t be trudging through boring campaigns for higher office right now if they had. Try to imagine Zarif explaining to the Ayatollah how he routed classified material through his private IranianPlayboy.com email address because he thought carrying two cell phones was inconvenient.
The Hill also mentions ranking Democrat Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) moaning, “I don’t see the relevance of that to this committee” in response to Cotton’s questions.
That’s why Democrats should never be allowed to have national-security influence. They don’t see the “relevance” of anything except their own political interests. They need to have it explained to them why putting classified and Top Secret data through an insecure, easily-raided server to suit the convenience of an arrogant politician is dangerous.
One rather disturbing part of Rogers’ testimony was his assertion that he had “no knowledge” of whether any email from NSA officials ended up on Clinton’s server, or if the NSA was even aware of its existence. Both of those assertions are difficult to believe, coming from the head of the agency famed for monitoring everyone else’s email and cell phone activity. Nobody thought to search the NSA archives for traffic to ClintonEmail.com addresses after this story broke? They haven’t checked with others to find out if any of their traffic was forwarded to the Secretary of State? No one at the NSA noticed Hillary wasn’t using a State Department email address? I’d really hate to believe any of that is true.