Security risk: Emails in Clinton probe dealt with planned drone strikes

The Democratic presidential nominee had sent classified emails using a private server

WASHINGTON: Emails between US diplomats in Islamabad and State Department officials in Washington about whether to challenge specific US drone strikes in Pakistan are at the centre of a criminal probe involving Hillary Clinton's handling of classified information, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

The 2011 and 2012 emails were sent via the ‘low side’ – government slang for a computer system for unclassified matters – as part of a secret arrangement that gave the State Department more of a voice in whether a CIA drone strike went ahead, according to congressional and law enforcement officials briefed on the FBI probe, the Journal said.

Some of the emails were then forwarded by Clinton's aides to her personal email account, which routed them to a server she kept at her home in suburban New York when she was secretary of state, the officials said, according to the newspaper.

Investigators have raised concerns that Clinton's personal server was less secure than State Department systems, and a recent report by the State Department inspector general found that Clinton had broken government rules by using a private email server without approval, undermining Clinton's earlier defences of her emails.

The still-secret emails are a key part of the FBI investigation that has long dogged Clinton's presidential campaign, the officials told the Journal.

Clinton this week clinched the Democratic presidential nomination for the November 8 election and was endorsed by President Barack Obama on Thursday.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 11^th, 2016.