Hillary Clinton pegged as ‘insider’ threat in Army unit’s OPSEC training

The Army has confirmed that one of its units highlighted former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as an example of an “insider” threat to operational security.

A Facebook page called “U.S. Army W.T.F! moments” recently displayed images from a Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, training slide that is at least 18 months old. The image lists Mrs. Clinton as a prime example of an OPSEC threat, along with CIA leaker Edward Snowden, former CIA head and Army Gen. David Petraeus and others.

Maj. Thomas Campbell, spokesman for the Army’s Training and Doctrine Command, confirmed the details of the presentation to The Daily Caller late Monday.

“We have confirmed that the slide was developed 18 months ago and used locally as a part of a training presentation on best practices for handling classified material and maintaining operational security,” the officer said. “As is common with Army training requirements, the local unit was given latitude to develop their own training products to accomplish the overall training objective.

“This particular presentation had not been reviewed or approved by the unit’s leadership, and does not reflect the position of the Army,” Maj. Campbell said. “The training presentation has since been removed.”

The decision by the Army to prohibit that part of the presentation is noteworthy, given that FBI Director James Comey excoriated Mrs. Clinton’s handling of government documents on national television July 5. The former secretary of state put national security at risk by using a secret email server — for years — that was housed within her New York estate.

“From the group of 30,000 emails returned to the State Department, 110 emails in 52 email chains have been determined by the owning agency to contain classified information at the time they were sent or received,” Mr. Comey said in reference to Mrs. Clinton’s server scandal. “Eight of those chains contained information that was Top Secret at the time they were sent; 36 chains contained Secret information at the time; and eight contained Confidential information, which is the lowest level of classification. Separate from those, about 2,000 additional emails were ’up-classified’ to make them Confidential; the information in those had not been classified at the time the emails were sent.”

The FBI director then said the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee was “extremely careless” with highly classified information.

“There is evidence to support a conclusion that any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton’s position, or in the position of those government employees with whom she was corresponding about these matters, should have known that an unclassified system was no place for [official conversations],” Mr. Comey continued.

U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch closed the case into Mrs. Clinton’s handling of government documents after the FBI recommended no charges be brought against her.

“I received and accepted their unanimous recommendation that the thorough, year-long investigation be closed and that no charges be brought against any individuals within the scope of the investigation,” Ms. Lynch said in a statement on July 7.