I made the mistake yesterday of taking what appeared to be a serious story about Hillary Clinton’s email server containing Top Secret/Special Access Program information at face value. This is a short update on that, given subsequent details being published:
The Central Intelligence Agency is the agency that provided the declarations about the classified programs, another U.S. official familiar with the situation told POLITICO Wednesday.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said some or all of the emails deemed to implicate “special access programs” related to U.S. drone strikes. Those who sent the emails were not involved in directing or approving the strikes, but responded to the fallout from them, the official said.
The information in the emails “was not obtained through a classified product, but is considered "‘per se’ classified” because it pertains to drones, the official added. The U.S. treats drone operations conducted by the CIA as classified, even though in a 2012 internet chat Presidential Barack Obama acknowledged U.S.-directed drone strikes in Pakistan.
The source noted that the intelligence community considers information about classified operations to be classified even if it appears in news reports or is apparent to eyewitnesses on the ground. For example, U.S. officials with security clearances have been warned not to access classified information leaked to WikiLeaks and published in the New York Times.
So yeah, this is total BS. Yes, technically discussing news reports of the highly secret drone program is a security violation. But it’s the most nit-picky, idiotic “violation” conceivable.
I apologize to all here for having been taken in, even for one day.