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Man Who Ran Clinton’s Personal Email Server Worked for State Department
The man who set up and administered Hillary Clinton’s personal email server during her tenure as Secretary of State worked for the State Department. This adds ethical issues to the problems Clinton already faces, as well raising questions about a taxpayer-paid official conducting private business on our dime.
The FBI has begun looking into the security of Hillary Clinton’s private e-mail setup. Also last week, the FBI contacted Clinton’s lawyer, David Kendall, with questions about the security of a thumb drive in his possession that contains copies of work e-mails Clinton sent during her time as secretary of state, some of which — according to the Inspectors General from State and the Intelligence Community — contain classified material.
According to the Washington Post, those briefed on the server state the hardware was purchased for use by Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign and installed at the Chappaqua home. That means any malware acquired under the conditions of the campaign migrated with the server.
Bryan Pagliano
More significantly, along with the new server came a technical specialist, Bryan Pagliano, pictured, who had worked as Clinton’s campaign’s IT director. According to federal campaign finance records, Pagliano was paid by Clinton’s Senate leadership PAC through April 2009. The next month, he went to work for the State Department as an IT specialist.
The people briefed on the server indicated that Pagliano continued to act as the lead specialist responsible for Clinton’s personal server even while he was employed by the Department of State. The e-mail system was not always reliable, these people said, with Pagliano summoned at various times to fix problems. Notably, the system crashed for days after New York was hit by Hurricane Sandy in October 2012, while Hillary Clinton was still secretary of state. It is unclear what email system the secretary used to conduct the nation’s diplomatic business with during that period.
Responsibility for Clinton’s email system was moved to a private company, Platte River Networks in Denver, only in 2013, after Clinton left the State Department. That company either administered Clinton’s server in New York remotely, or operated a server for her in its own data warehouse. Either would have opened the hardware and its contents to a larger group.
Pagliano at State
Bryan Pagliano’s job at the State Department is confirmed on his LinkedIn page.
He lists his political-appointee position as “Serve as strategic advisor and special projects manager to the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) / Deputy Chief Information Officer (DCIO) overseeing the operations of the Information Resource Management (IRM) bureau.” Working at such a high level inside State’s IT structure assures that State’s most senior information officers knew about Clinton’s email setup, and apparently did not or were not able to stop it.
Pagliano’s Facebook page also shows his closeness to the Clintons (the third person is identified on Facebook as Carrie Pagliano):
We note that at the same of this writing, Pagliano’s Facebook page employs no security, meaning anyone may access all of its content. Odd move for a guy in charge of the Secretary of State’s email.
BONUS: The State Department’s Chief Information Officer, who should have stopped the Clinton email server? Well, well, she retired from State a few months before Hillary left, into a nice job at the IMF. It pays to be a winner!
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