TEL AVIV – An alarming exchange between Hillary Clinton and one of her top deputies reveals Clinton’s private email server may have had significant technical or security-related issues.
The exchange with former US Under-Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Judith McHale finds that McHale’s emails sent directly to Clinton over the prior two months were not received at Clinton’s private address, according to Clinton herself. The emails also were not searchable in Clinton’s email archive, Clinton reveals.
McHale wrote to her boss that she was concerned her messages “may be hitting some tech glitch.”
In another instance that may be evidence of a possible security or technical issue, Clinton informed McHale that it took four minutes to receive an email that was marked with a timestamp from four minutes earlier.
The correspondence was contained in Monday’s batch of roughly 3,900 pages said to be the last of Clinton’s work-related emails. The messages were reviewed in full by this reporter.
On Jan 3, 2010, Clinton sent an email to McHale to inquire about several matters, including whether McHale had knowledge of the Ben Franklin Award for public diplomacy and whether the undersecretary had connected with a Georgetown professor who wanted to help with Muslim engagement.
McHale did not reply to Clinton’s message, an unusual nonresponse to an email from the secretary of state.
On January 9, Clinton forwarded her original message to McHale, asking, “Judith–Did you ever receive the email below? There were a few questions I wanted to bring to your attention.”
McHale wrote back expressing concern about a possible technical glitch in Clinton’s email system.
“Just curious whether you received the emails I sent to you over the past 2 months, re; pakistan, doug holloway, etc. Nothing urgent they were informational only but I am concerned our emails may be hitting some tech glitch,” McHale replied.
Clinton wrote back, “No, I haven’t. I just did a search and have nothing from you before today. Did it appear on you (sic) email that they went thru to me?”
In other words, Clinton’s undersecretary had sent her emails for two months and Clinton wrote that not only were the emails not received, the correspondence was not even searchable in her email archive.
The concerning messages did not end there.
McHale wrote back to Clinton, “Not to be too neurotic about this but want to be sure you got my response about the meetings in Tampa yesterday. If not I will resend.”
“I got it this morning at 8:35am; according to email, it was sent at 8:31am today,” Clinton replied, without attempting to explain the four-minute discrepancy.
There has been some concern that Clinton’s private email system was vulnerable to hacking.
In October 2015, the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee revealed that it had found evidence of attempted intrusions into Clinton’s private server in 2013 and 2014.
The same month, the AP reported that it obtained documents showing a hacker from Serbia was able to scan Clinton’s email server in 2012.
The AP reported:
Using a computer in Serbia, the hacker scanned Clinton’s basement server in Chappaqua at least twice, in August and December 2012. It was unclear whether the hacker was aware the server belonged to Clinton, although it identified itself as providing email services for clintonemail.com. The results are widely available online.
The AP further reported on vulnerabilities in Clinton’s initial email set up in 2012:
Clinton’s server, which handled her personal and State Department correspondence, appeared to allow users to connect openly over the Internet to control it remotely, according to detailed records compiled in 2012. Experts said the Microsoft remote desktop service wasn’t intended for such use without additional protective measures, and was the subject of U.S. government and industry warnings at the time over attacks from even low-skilled intruders.
Records show that Clinton additionally operated two more devices on her home network in Chappaqua, New York that also were directly accessible from the Internet. One contained similar remote-control software that also has suffered from security vulnerabilities, known as Virtual Network Computing, and the other appeared to be configured to run websites.
In January, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the “odds are pretty high” that Clinton’s emails may have been hacked by either China, Iran, or Russia.
Aaron Klein is Breitbart’s Jerusalem bureau chief and senior investigative reporter. He is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the popular weekend talk radio program, “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio.” Follow him on Twitter @AaronKleinShow. Follow him on Facebook.
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