Ride the Lightning

Want to Know What's In Obama's E-mails? Ask the Russians.

April 27, 2015

Yes, this does appear to be a theme recently as more details are released about the presumptively Russian hacking of the White House computer system. As The New York Times reported, we are not talking about the classified portion of the White House's computer system, but rather e-mail correspondence to and from the President involving people outside the classified White House system.

The hackers obtained access to the e-mail archives of people inside the White House and perhaps some outside the White House, with whom the President communicated. Many senior officials have two computers in their offices, one operating on a highly secure classified network and another connected to the outside world for unclassified communications.

Officials have conceded that the unclassified system routinely contains information that is considered highly sensitive: schedules, e-mail exchanges with ambassadors and diplomats, discussions of pending personnel moves and legislation and some debate about policy. The compromise of the President's communications has been a closely guarded secret even though senior White House officials have known about it for months. As many know, the President has a special BlackBerry smartphone and the list of those he can exchange emails with is highly restricted.

When asked about the investigation’s findings, the spokeswoman for the National Security Council, Bernadette Meehan, said, “We’ll decline to comment.” The White House has also declined to provide any explanations about how the breach was handled, though the State Department has been more candid about what kind of systems were hit and what it has done since to improve security.

For those who may have wondered, the White House, the State Department, the Pentagon and intelligence agencies put their most classified material into a system called Jwics, for Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System. That is where top-secret and “secret compartmentalized information” travels within the government, to officials cleared for it. There is no evidence, senior officials said, that this hacking pierced Jwics.

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