WASHINGTON
Contrary to views collected by the FBI that Hillary Clinton was a technophobe unsophisticated in the use of computers, her paid speeches indicate that she was well aware of the dangers of computer hacking and penetration and that diplomats would be “totally vulnerable” without extreme precautions.
Excerpts from Clinton’s speeches, which she refused to release during her hard fought primary campaign against Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, were among some 2,050 private emails published Friday by the anti-secrecy website Wikileaks, after what the Obama administration says was a Russian intrusion that obtained the data.
The Clinton campaign has declined to vouch for the authenticity of the leaked emails and has suggested they might be fake, though the emails apparently were pirated during the same hacking effort that captured emails whose publication led to the resignation of Democratic National Committee chair Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz in July.
One of the newly released emails includes transcripts of numerous private remarks Clinton made in recent years about the dangers of being a victim of hacking and the backwardness of the State Department bureaucracy in adopting new technology.
Clinton noted with concern that America’s global rivals, particularly Russia and China, constantly sought to penetrate the communications of U.S. diplomats while she served as secretary of state.
“Every time I went to countries like China or Russia, I mean, we couldn’t take our computers, we couldn’t take our personal devices, we couldn’t take anything off the plane because they’re so good, they would penetrate them in a minute, less, a nanosecond. So we would take the batteries out, we’d leave them on the plane,” Clinton said in Aug. 28, 2014, remarks.
The private comment apparently came in a talk she gave to a software storage company, Nexenta, and was included in an email from Tony Carrk, research director at Hillary for America, to other campaign staffers with the message line “HRC paid speeches.”
Carrk noted that the New York speakers bureau that arranged Clinton’s paid speaking engagements, Harry Walker Agency, had flagged excerpts from various speeches as worthy of campaign attention.
In that speech and in others, Clinton cast herself as knowledgeable about technology, even a paladin of sorts to bring change to the federal government, and hyper aware of global cyber threats.
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