WaPo Reporter: ‘Security Risk’ With Clinton Server Over ‘Very Sensitive’ Material

Washington Post Reporter Carol Leonnig, who broke the story on the FBI looking into Hillary Clinton’s email system along with Rosalind S. Helderman and Tom Hamburger, stated that the “security risk” with Clinton’s private server is because “the Secretary of State’s going to be discussing…very sensitive material we wouldn’t want falling into enemy hands” on Wednesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

Leonnig said, “There were a lot of concerns inside the State Department among aides, and also in the campaign, about the security of the server, largely for practical reasons. It was actually failing at times, and kind of crashing. … So there were anxieties about that, not because they were worrying about classified information, per se, but because there were questions, ‘Is this really working properly?'”

She added, “it has to be said that Hillary Clinton has said, over and over again, [paraphrasing] ‘the material that I sent and received was never stamped classified.’ And, of course, as we all know, the intelligence community Inspector General has said, it appears that a lot of this material was classified in nature, whether it was stamped that way or not. And that’s the security risk is, the Secretary of State’s going to be discussing things like, the movements of foreign dignitaries, the private discussions with foreign governments, security at, say, embassies and consulates. And that is all going to be very sensitive material we wouldn’t want falling into enemy hands.”

Leonnig later stated, “Sources are concerned — that are in the intelligence community, are concerned about, again, the possibility of hacking, the possibility of unknown access, and this material falling into the wrong hands. That’s the number one, primary concern. And there are a lot of interesting cases, David Petraeus, Sandy Berger, and [with] many of them, the legal issue is, did they willfully, knowingly release classified information and pass it on to somebody? Did they willfully take it out of secure holding or storage? In this case, really, what the — both the IG and the FBI are trying to figure out is, is this material secure now? Has it been secure? And let’s make sure it doesn’t fall into enemy hands.”

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