http://insider.foxnews.com/2015/02/18/herridge-internal-state-dept-emails-show-extreme-chaos-during-yemen-evacuationAs seen on America's Newsroom
Internal State Department emails appear to show "genuine panic" during last week's evacuation of the U.S. Embassy in Yemen, Fox News chief intelligence correspondent Catherine Herridge reported exclusively this morning.
After reviewing internal State Department emails, Herridge said that standard procedures to protect sensitive information were not followed during the hasty evacuation from Sana'a.
She described panicked emails circulating at the highest levels of the State Department despite spokeswoman Jen Psaki downplaying the situation at her Feb. 11 briefing.
"We re-evaluated, or evaluated, our security posture based on the uncertain security situation in Sana'a. That's something that has been discussed for some time. As you know, we recently pulled down some staff, so this was a next step in that effort," said Psaki.
Herridge said that eight days before the evacuation, U.S. Ambassador Matthew Tueller, with the approval of Under Secretary of State Patrick Kennedy, ordered embassy staff to leave in place a main communication link with Washington in case they could not get out of the country.
"When an embassy evacuates, or does a bug-out, all classified information is wiped and communications are disabled or removed and that did not happen in this case," Herridge reported.
She added that, according to diplomatic sources, officials were not confident that the evacuation would succeed and felt they needed the communication link to Washington as a "kind of lifeline" in a last-ditch effort to leave.
Herridge highlighted the following email as showing "genuine panic" among State Department officials after the evacuation was completed.
Herridge said officials were concerned that the communication link was still open and that all classified data had not been wiped from computers.
The data includes day-to-day operations at the embassy, a list of staff, security procedures and unclassified email traffic.
Herridge said, according to another email, that the State Department in Washington needed to remotely access the system to delete files that were still in Yemen.
She added, however, that six servers were left intact, including financial management records, passport information and visa applications.
"This is the kind of personally identifiable information that could easily be exploited by terrorists," said Herridge.
