More Emails Show Hillary Flouted Security Protocols

A conservative watchdog group Thursday released more State Department emails calling into question Hillary Clinton’s truthfulness under oath.

Clinton denied under oath remembering any conversations about security issues arising from her use of a private email account while secretary of state. But she complained to then-Gen. David Petraeus about “BlackBerry blues” during her tenure, chafing at her inability to use her device in a secure area.

“These new emails show the truth that the separate email system was never a matter of ‘convenience’ for Mrs. Clinton.”

Judicial Watch got the emails — which the FBI recovered from Clinton’s deleted files — under a Freedom of Information Act request.

Shortly after taking office in January 2009, Clinton emailed Petraeus — then commander of the U.S. Central Command — and asked him to use only her personal email when contacting her. Later that month, she complained that she could not use her device in her office, which was a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF).

“David – Sorry to be so tardy in responding,” she wrote. “I’ve had blackberry blues. I can’t use mine all day long since my whole office is a SCIF. I don’t yet have a computer and I had to change my address and lost some of my traffic.”

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In answers to written questions submitted by Judicial Watch in August, Clinton — through her lawyer — indicated that she did not recall anything about security issues of her BlackBerry use. Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a prepared statement that the exchange with Petraeus contradicts that testimony.

“These new emails show the truth that the separate email system was never a matter of ‘convenience’ for Mrs. Clinton. She wanted to hide her emails from the American people,” he said in the statement. “It’s now clear why she deleted or withheld so many and why Mrs. Clinton didn’t recall or declined to answer questions about her email security, And her request to Petraeus while he was the commander of the United States Central Command to communicate with her solely at her unsecure email address shows Hillary Clinton’s willful negligence in handling national defense information.”

It is the second day in a row that Judicial Watch has called into questions Clinton’s denials under oath. On Wednesday, the group released emails between Clinton and the specialist who set up her secret, private email server in her house.

Judicial Watch on Thursday also included an email from former Secretary of State Colin Powell warning Clinton to keep her BlackBerry use secret to avoid federal records laws. In the Jan. 23, 2009, email — previously made public after a hacker tapped into Powell’s email account — the former secretary wrote: “However there is real danger. If it is public that you have a BlackBerry and … you are using it, government or not to do business, it may become an official record and subject to the law.”

Powell added that he “got around it all by not saying much.”

Judicial Watch lawyers asked about Clinton’s BlackBerry use as part of an unrelated civil suit. Attorneys pointed to a March 2009 memo from Assistant Secretary of State for Diplomatic Security Eric J. Boswell to Clinton’s chief of staff, Cheryl Mills. He wrote that he “cannot stress too strongly, however, that any unclassified BlackBerry is highly vulnerable in any setting to remotely and covertly monitoring conversations, retrieving email, and exploiting calendars.”

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Lawyers asked Clinton why she continued to use her BlackBerry anyway. Her lawyers objected, arguing that “cybersecurity issues” were beyond the scope of the judge’s order.

Judicial Watch lawyers asked why Clinton wrote, “Let’s get a separate address or device” in an email to Deputy Chief of Staff Huma Abedin in November 2009.

Her lawyers responded that Clinton meant that she was willing to use a State Department email account or device as long as her personal emails with family and friends would not be accessible to the State Department.

Judicial Watch last year released documents it obtained through a federal court order containing more than 50 State Department internal emails from 2009 to 2011 warning against using “highly vulnerable” BlackBerrys in the executive offices at the agency. Boswell advised Mills that the vulnerabilities of BlackBerrys “considerably outweigh their convenience.”