Fired State Department IG Sent Confidential Info to His Personal Email Accounts

[PeteS in CA]

https://freebeacon.com/national-security/fired-state-department-ig-sent-confidential-info-to-his-personal-email-accounts/

Fired State Department IG Sent Confidential Info to His Personal Email Accounts

The State Department inspector general whose recent dismissal ignited a political firestorm sent copies detailing a sensitive investigation to his personal email account, according to a probe into his conduct run by the Defense Department's inspector general.

The inquiry report, dated March 17, confirms that fired State Department inspector general Steve Linick was the subject of a broad investigation related to the leaks of politically charged materials to journalists, specifically a draft evaluation report into Brian Hook, the State Department’s top Iran official. The report, which was provided to the House Foreign Affairs Committee, concluded that while Linick was permitted to send information to his personal email account to facilitate access while traveling, he was the only official in that office to have done so. The disclosure is likely to raise new questions about Linick’s suspected role in leaking sensitive information to the press.

Linick’s firing generated harsh criticism from Democrats and many in the media, with opponents of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo alleging the former IG was canned for his efforts to investigate allegations of impropriety related to Pompeo and his staff. The Trump administration, however, has maintained that Linick’s firing was justified.

Details of the highly sensitive investigation into Hook—involving unsubstantiated allegations that Hook fired officials he saw as insufficiently hawkish on Iran—were leaked to the media without authorization, according to the DOD investigation.

For the sake of chronological context, Linick was fired May 15th, ~2 months after that DoD IG report. So at least one reason Linick was fired is because he was a probable leaker. Maybe Sen, Grassley will get off his posturing-high-horse long enough to comprehend this.

[PeteS in CA]

More thought on Linick, https://hotair.com/archives/ed-morrissey/2020/06/12/hmmm-fired-state-dept-ig-subject-massive-leak-probe/

Why would an IG need to copy sensitive material to his personal e-mail account at all? That might be something that bureaucrats do in order to act as whistleblowers, but IGs are already whistleblowers by form and function. They have a formal and well-trodden path to Congress for revealing any issues within executive agencies. There is no need for them to leak to anyone except the relevant congressional committees about what they find in investigations.

The DOD probe may not have found any direct evidence of leaks to the press, but they appear to at least have a circumstantial case developing. If no one else violated internal security to get those documents out of their classified containment, then Linick looks like the source of any leaking that did occur. At the very least, he violated those classified-material rules that IGs are supposed to enforce and defend.

This might be why Linick became a cause célèbre in the media, too. If they just lost an insider within the federal bureaucracy, of course they’d try to make him a martyr … for any other reason than what Linick was really doing, assuming that is what he was doing. It seems pretty absurd to think that Linick was fired for merely dotting Is and crossing Ts on the latest in a decades-long string of arms sales to Saudi Arabia, though.

There's much more, of course, including on Rep. Eliot Engel's House committee's disinterest in hearing testimony from State Department officials.