State Department tech staffers in December 2010 disabled security features as they struggled to fix a serious glitch affecting Hillary Clinton’s private email server, and scrambled to thwart incoming cyber attacks, according to new emails released under court order.
The emails, released as part of an ongoing lawsuit filed by the legal advocacy group Judicial Watch, show that IT officials working for the State Department disabled security software designed to thwart cyber attacks in an effort to resolve a problem with emails being sent from Clinton’s private server.
“This should trump all other activities,” a senior tech official wrote in a Dec. 17, 2010, email. Other emails show that senior Hillary aide Huma Abedin was demanding updates on the troubleshooting process, which had been prompted by complaints from Abedin and Clinton that their emails were not being received by other State Department employees over the official, government-approved email system.
At one point, tech staffers decided to disable a number of security features, after which one senior tech official warned, “We view this as a Band-Aid and fear it’s not 100 percent fully effective.”
In January 2011, weeks after the technical problem arose, an IT staffer was forced to shut down Clinton’s private server because “someone was trying to hack us,” according to the email documents released on Wednesday. Several hours later, the same IT staffer wrote, “We were attacked again so I shut (the server) down for a few min.” This incident was one of several occasion where Clinton’s email access was disrupted because her private server was not functioning, according to the documents.
The revelations come nearly a month after the release of a damning report from the State Department inspector general, which found that Hillary Clinton violated a number of rules governing the use of email at the State Department. Clinton, for example, did not seek permission to use a private email server, and would not have been given permission to do so, the report found.
Many critics have argued that Clinton’s unconventional email setup put national security at risk due to its vulnerability to attacks from foreign intelligence services. The FBI continues to investigate the matter, and is expected to report its findings later this year.
