[Mr.
Comey said the emails included eight chains of emails and replies, some written
by her, that contained information classified as “top secret: special access
programs.” That classification is the highest level, reserved for the nation’s
most highly guarded intelligence operations or sources.]
By Steven Lee Myers
 |
Hillary
Clinton at Joint Base Andrews, Md., on Tuesday before flying to a
campaign rally
with President Obama in
Credit
Doug Mills/The New York Times
|
WASHINGTON
— Even as he declined to recommend a criminal case against Hillary Clinton, the
F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, undercut many of the arguments she has used to
play down her use of a private email server while secretary of state, describing
a series of questionable, even reckless, decisions made by her and her aides.
At
least 110 emails sent through her server contained information that was
classified at the time it was sent, he said, meaning it should never have been
sent or received on an unclassified computer network — not hers, not even the
State Department’s official state.gov system.
That
fact refutes the core argument she and others have made: that the entire
controversy turned on the overzealous, after-the-fact classification of emails
as they were being made public under the Freedom of Information Act, rather
than the mishandling of the nation’s secrets.
Mr.
Comey’s announcement was, arguably, the worst possible good news Mrs. Clinton’s
presidential campaign could have hoped for: no criminal charges, but a pointed
refutation of statements like one she flatly made last August. “I did not send
classified material,” she said then.
“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,” Mr. Comey said, suggesting that Mrs. Clinton and her aides were
“extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified
information.”
Mr.
Comey said the emails included eight chains of emails and replies, some written
by her, that contained information classified as “top secret: special access
programs.” That classification is the highest level, reserved for the nation’s
most highly guarded intelligence operations or sources.
Another
36 chains were “secret,” which is defined as including information that “could
be expected to cause serious damage to the national security”; eight others had
information classified at the lowest level, “confidential.”
While
Mr. Comey’s disclosures did not radically reshape what was known about Mrs. Clinton’s
use of a private email server, installed in her home in Chappaqua , N.Y.
Among
those was the fact that “a very small number” of emails sent on her server bore
markings that indicated they were classified, contradicting not only previous
statements of Mrs. Clinton but also claims by the State Department that none
had.
While
he did not identify any, he was evidently referring to two emails that one of
Mrs. Clinton’s close aides, Monica R. Hanley, sent to prepare her for telephone
calls with foreign leaders, according to a State Department official familiar
with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss classified
information.
One
email, dated Aug. 2, 2012 , noted that Kofi Annan, the former secretary
general of the United Nations, was stepping down as special envoy trying to
mediate the war in Syria Malawi
Each
was marked with a small notation, “(C),” indicating it contained information
classified as “confidential.”
Other
paragraphs in the note about Mr. Annan’s resignation were marked “(SBU),” for
“sensitive but unclassified.” That designation appears in more than 1,000 of
the 30,000 work-related emails that Mrs. Clinton turned over to the State
Department, including some later “upgraded” to higher levels of classification.
The official said that the notations were part of “a standard process” when
preparing a phone call, which would be “confidential” until it occurred and
then considered unclassified.
Far
more serious were those that were unmarked, according to Mr. Comey. He referred
at one point to eight chains that were classified as “top secret,” and at
another point to seven with the additional designation as “special access
programs.” Only a small number of officials are allowed access to those
programs, which are the nation’s most sensitive intelligence operations.
“Those
chains involved Secretary Clinton both sending and receiving emails about those
same matters,” he said.
Mr.
Comey did not detail any of the information contained in the emails, but the
State Department announced in January that it would not release to the public 22
emails contained in seven chains of emails and replies, even in a redacted form,
as thousands of others have been over the last year. Those emails have been widely
reported to include information about the Central Intelligence Agency’s program
to use drones to track and kill terrorism suspects.
It
was not immediately clear what subject the eighth chain Mr. Comey cited
involved, but his statement means that more than 22 emails already disclosed
included “top secret” information. Officials at the F.B.I. did not respond to
inquiries seeking further explanation.
As
part of its investigation, the agency also found that while secretary of state,
Mrs. Clinton used more than one server and more than one mobile device, the
BlackBerry that at one point in her tenure became a meme. In hindsight, that
image, once celebrated, would come to haunt her politically.
The
change in servers and devices meant some emails were not saved but remained in
the “slack space” of the previous ones. That led to the “painstaking
undertaking” of piecing together millions of email fragments like a jigsaw
puzzle, Mr. Comey said, and ultimately proved that she had not turned over all
of her work-related email to the State Department as she and her aides have
claimed.
Three
emails that were recovered also contained classified information, one “secret”
and two “confidential.” Mr. Comey strongly suggested that others might be lost
to the public record for good, though he suggested that there was no
“reasonable confidence” that they were deliberately withheld or destroyed.
The
State Department itself faced criticism, with Mr. Comey saying that agents
“developed evidence that the security culture” of the department was “generally
lacking.” The department’s spokesman, John Kirby, took issue with the
characterization.
“We’re
going to continue to look for ways to improve,” he said, “but we don’t share
the broad assessment made of our institution that there’s a lax culture here
when it comes to protecting classified information.”
Mr.
Comey cited no evidence that Mrs. Clinton’s server had been hacked, but he
added that such a breach was possible, because she had “used her personal email
extensively” while traveling abroad, including “in the territory of
sophisticated adversaries.”
Steven
Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of
American Scientists, said that the government’s classification of information
was often opaque.
“This
is very much a moving target,” he said, referring to Mr. Comey’s remark that 2,000
emails were “up-classified” to make them confidential. “That may have
contributed to the reluctance to pursue criminal charges.”
Other
factors might have been the frequency and the recipients. The 110 emails
represented only a small fraction of the roughly 60,000 emails that passed
through Mrs. Clinton’s servers. Even with the 2,000 that the State Department
upgraded as part of their public release, they account for fewer than 7 percent
of those sent and received. Also, as one law enforcement official noted, the
recipients of the most sensitive emails included aides or diplomats who have
clearances to receive classified information — as opposed to a journalist, as
was the case with the former director of the C.I.A., David H. Petraeus.
In
the end, as damning as Mr. Comey’s conclusion was, he did not claim that Mrs. Clinton’s
behavior had compromised any program or operation.
“There
was no assertion of damage to national security because of this episode,” Mr. Aftergood
said.
In
the handling of classified information, however, any carelessness is cause for
concern. Mr. Comey noted that people who are careless often face administrative
punishment, echoing some officials at the State Department who have privately
suggested that a similar misstep could severely harm their careers.
“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 the matters should have known that an unclassified system was no place
for that conversation,” Mr. Comey said.
Michael
Schmidt and Eric Lichtblau contributed reporting from Washington, and Jeremy
Merrill from New
York