State Department Disabled Security Software To Allow Hillary's Private Server Emails

Emails released under court order Wednesday to Judicial Watch show that in December 2010, State Department technical staff had to disable software on their systems intended to block phishing emails that could deliver dangerous viruses. The reason: The State Department was trying to resolve delivery problems with emails sent from Hillary Clinton's private server.

Deputy chief of staff Huma Abedin and Hillary both used Clinton's private server, and as AP reports, both had complained that emails each sent to State Department employees were not being reliably received. "This should trump all other activities" Ken LaVolpe, a senior technical official told other IT employees in a December 17, 2010 email. Days later another email was sent by State Department official Thomas W. Lawrence saying that Abedin was personally asking for an update about the repairs.

After technical staffers turned off security features at the State Department, Lawrence cautioned in an email "we view this as a band-aid and fear it's not 100 percent fully effective." State Department spokesman John Kirby clarified that the emails describe "a series of troubleshooting measures to the department's system, not Secretary Clinton's system, to attempt to remedy the problem."

On January 9, 2011, an IT worker was forced to shut down Clinton's server because he believed "someone was trying to hack us." The worker then went on to write "we were hacked again so I shut (the server) down for a few min" in what was one of several occasions where email access to Clinton's blackberry was disrupted because the private server was down according to the documents.

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