In the past, whenever there has been a significant breach and/or compromise of our sensitive intelligence, the Intelligence Community forms a team to assess the damage. The assessment specifically identifies what was potentially lost to our enemies and the impact it may have had on achieving our objectives then and in the future. It may be recalled that this happened after the discovery of the John Walker spy ring in the 1980s. Walker was a retired Navy Lt. Commander who was selling the Soviet Union our Navy communication codes. Not surprisingly, the assessment concluded that the damage was significant. The same type of assessment was made on Soviet spies Robert Hanssen from the FBI and the CIA’s Aldrich Ames.
With our continuing vulnerability to cyber-attacks on many of our most secured government and industrial networks and systems, there is no question that Hillary Clinton’s unsecured server was hacked by many, if not all of our potential enemies including Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, et al. Therefore, unquestionably, the compromise of our former Secretary of State’s communications for four years qualifies as a serious security breach. Now, with the completion of the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) report by Inspector General Michael Horowitz on the FBI’s investigation into the use of a private, unsecured server by Hillary Clinton, her aides as well as former President Barack Obama, an assessment must be made. After all, let’s not forget that their actions in knowingly using an unsecured server was a clear violation of the Espionage Act and they must be held accountable.
The compromise of our Secretary of State’s server had to be a gold mine for our potential enemies. This fact cannot be obscured by one of the IG report’s most significant failings, which was that Inspector General Michael Horowitz could find no documentary evidence that the Federal Bureau of “Incompetence” (FBI) decision to not prosecute Mrs. Clinton was affected by any political bias. This defies credibility, considering statements by Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, and other agents who expressed a determination to stop candidate Trump from becoming President. Further, when Page sought assurance from Strzok that Trump’s “not ever going to become president, right? Right?,” he said, “No, no he’s not. We’ll stop it!” Case closed! In that sense, Horowitz’s report is reminiscent to some extent of Chairman Trey Gowdy’s 800-page report on the Benghazi debacle, when he couldn’t find the courage to clearly and publicly identify the report’s findings on Secretary Clinton’s role in this disaster. He instead urged the public to read the full report and come to their own conclusions.
To Horowitz’s credit, he laid out a persuasive case, including many emails, about the wrongdoing and bias committed by Strzok, Page and others. In his conclusion he wrote, “While we did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that improper considerations, including political bias, directly affected the specific investigative actions we reviewed in Chapter Five [“Investigative Methods Used in the Investigation”], the conduct by these employees cast a cloud over the entire FBI investigation and sowed doubt about the FBI’s work on, and its handling of, the Midyear investigation.”
Separate from the IG’s report, we cannot lose sight of the extent of the intelligence that was compromised by Clinton’s deliberate use of an unsecured server. These hacked communications most likely included sensitive US policy positions and information on key issues such as:
- The US position (or lack thereof) on China’s aggressive actions and its building of facilities on contested rocks and shoals in the South China Sea.
- Exposing our undercover agents in other countries.
- The consummation of the sale of twenty percent of our strategic uranium deposits to Russia.
- The content of US government discussions involving the decision to take no action against N. Korea for violating multiple US and UN sanctions.
- Our negotiating tactics for the consummation of the unsigned nuclear weapons agreement with Iran. They also were most likely aware of what our reaction would be to their many violations of the sanctions imposed on them. Our allies most likely understood that they would not suffer any severe consequences for ignoring the imposed sanctions by continuing to do business with Iran.
- The Arab Spring uprisings and the Obama administration’s support for the Muslim Brotherhood to take over Egypt and eventually all of North Africa. Most likely, Presidential Study Directive (PSD)-11 dated August 2010 (classified and hidden from the American public) on our shift in Middle East policy was compromised.
- Key communications on the Benghazi tragedy and the overthrow of Qaddafi’s regime.
Of course, there are many more key incidents and situations that were compromised. Therefore, a special intelligence assessment team needs to be formed to examine in detail the hundreds of thousands of emails that were transmitted through Clinton’s unsecured server as well as those of Sheryl Mills, Huma Abedin, and her then-husband Anthony Weiner’s laptop. This assessment cannot be under the control of the Department of State or the Federal Bureau of “Incompetence.” It must be controlled by the Director of National Intelligence.
This column originally appeared in the Canada Free Press.
The views expressed in CCNS member articles are not necessarily the views or positions of the entire CCNS. They are the views of the authors, who are members of the CCNS.
