Hillary Clinton used her private email account to pass along the identity of one of the CIA’s top Libyan intelligence sources, raising new questions about her handling of classified information, according to excerpts from previously undisclosed emails released Thursday by Rep. Trey Gowdy, the Republican chairman of the House Select Committee on Benghazi.
On March 18, 2011, Sidney Blumenthal—Clinton’s longtime friend and political adviser—sent the then secretary of state an email to her private account that contained apparently highly sensitive information he had received from Tyler Drumheller, a former top CIA official with whom Blumenthal at the time had a business relationship, Yahoo News reported.
“Tyler spoke to a colleague currently at CIA, who told him the agency had been dependent for intelligence from [redacted due to sources and methods],” the email states, according to Gowdy’s letter.
The redacted information was “the name of a human source,” Gowdy wrote to his Democratic counterpart, Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, and was therefore “some of the most protected information in our intelligence community.”
“Armed with that information, Secretary Clinton forwarded the email to a colleague debunking her claim that she never sent any classified information from her private email address,” wrote Gowdy in a letter to Cummings.
Clinton has repeatedly said she never sent or received classified information on her private email server “that was marked classified at the time that it was sent or received.” But the FBI, at the request of the inspectors general for the intelligence community and the State Department, is investigating the handling of classified information on the private server.
And while there is nothing that indicates that the email from Blumenthal (who was not a government employee) was marked classified at the time Clinton received it, the sensitive nature of its contents should have been a red flag and never should have been passed along, according to a former veteran CIA officer.
“She is exposing the name of a guy who has a clandestine relationship with the CIA on her private, unprotected server,” said John Maguire, who served for years as one of the CIA’s top Mideast officers.
In addition, he noted, the email should trigger a “crimes report” by the CIA to the Justice Department seeking an investigation into who within the agency revealed the information to Drumheller.
“Unless Tyler was blowing smoke, it’s an unauthorized disclosure of information,” said John Rizzo, a former CIA general counsel. “And it’s the most sensitive kind of classified information—the identity of a human source. She should have told Blumenthal, ‘delete this—and don’t send me that again.’ And then she should have reported it to State Department security.”
