The
New York Post — As secretary of state, Hillary Clinton routinely asked
her maid to print out sensitive government e-mails and documents — including
ones containing classified information — from her house in Washington, DC,
e-mails and FBI memos show. But the housekeeper lacked the security clearance
to handle such material.
In fact, Marina
Santos was called on so frequently to receive e-mails that she may hold the
secrets to E-mailgate — if only the FBI and Congress would subpoena her and the
equipment she used.
Clinton entrusted far
more than the care of her DC residence, known as Whitehaven, to Santos. She
expected the Filipino immigrant to handle state secrets, further opening the
Democratic presidential nominee to criticism that she played fast and loose with
national security.
Clinton would first
receive highly sensitive e-mails from top aides at the State Department and
then request that they, in turn, forward the messages and any attached
documents to Santos to print out for her at the home.
Among other things,
Clinton requested Santos print out drafts of her speeches, confidential memos
and “call sheets” — background information and talking points prepared for the
secretary of state in advance of a phone call with a foreign head of state.
“Pls ask Marina to
print for me in am,” Clinton e-mailed top aide Huma Abedin regarding a redacted
2011 message marked sensitive but unclassified.
In a classified 2012
e-mail dealing with the new president of Malawi, another Clinton aide, Monica
Hanley, advised Clinton, “We can ask Marina to print this.”
“Revisions to the
Iran points” was the subject line of a classified April 2012 e-mail to Clinton
from Hanley. In it, the text reads, “Marina is trying to print for you.”
Both classified
e-mails were marked “confidential,” the tier below “secret” or “top secret.”
Santos also had
access to a highly secure room called an SCIF (sensitive compartmented
information facility) that diplomatic security agents set up at Whitehaven,
according to FBI notes from an interview with Abedin.
From within the SCIF,
Santos — who had no clearance — “collected documents from the secure facsimile
machine for Clinton,” the FBI notes revealed.
Just how sensitive
were the papers Santos presumably handled? The FBI noted Clinton periodically
received the Presidential Daily Brief — a top-secret document prepared by the
CIA and other US intelligence agencies — via the secure fax.
A 2012 “sensitive”
but unclassified e-mail from Hanley to Clinton refers to a fax the staff wanted
Clinton “to see before your Netanyahu mtg. Marina will grab for you.”
Yet it appears
Clinton was never asked by the FBI in its yearlong investigation to turn over
the iMac Santos used to receive the e-mails, or the printer she used to print
out the documents, or the printouts themselves.
As The Post first
reported, copies of Clinton’s 33,000 allegedly destroyed e-mails still
exist in other locations and could be recovered if investigators were
turned loose to seize them. Higher-ups at the Justice Department reportedly
have blocked them from obtaining search warrants to obtain the evidence.
It also appears the
FBI did not formally interview Santos as a key witness in its investigation.
This is a major
oversight: Santos may know the whereabouts of a missing Apple MacBook laptop
and USB flash drive that contain all of Clinton’s e-mails archived over her
four years in office.
In 2013, Hanley
downloaded Clinton’s e-mails from her private server to the MacBook and flash
drive.
“The two copies of
the Clinton e-mail archive (one on the archive laptop and one on the thumb
drive) were intended to be stored in Clinton’s Chappaqua and Whitehaven
residences,” the FBI said in its case summary.
But Hanley says the
devices were “lost,” and the FBI says it “does not have either item in its possession.”
In addition to
Abedin, Santos worked closely with Hanley at Whitehaven and could shed light on
the mystery — if only she were asked about it.
When a Post reporter
confronted Santos at her DC apartment Friday, she would say only, “I don’t
speak to reporters.”
According to a 2010
profile in The Philippine Star, close Clinton friend Vernon Jordan recommended
Santos to the Clintons after she worked part-time for him.
Bill Clinton gave a
speech in Manila as part of his foundation and took time to visit with the
family of the “mayordoma [housekeeper] of his Washington, DC, home — Marina
Santos.”
He was quoted as
describing Santos as the “wonderful woman who runs our home in Washington,
without whom Hillary will not be able to serve as secretary of state.” The
article ended remarking, without a hint of irony: “Marina now runs his house so
that he and his wife can better serve interests higher than their own.”
Santos could turn out
to be the Betty Currie of the Clinton e-mail scandal. Currie was the secretary
for President Clinton. She also came recommended by Jordan, and became famous
as a central witness in the Monica Lewinsky scandal for her handling of gifts
given to Clinton’s mistress.
Investigators had
sought the gifts, allegedly hidden under Currie’s bed on orders from Clinton,
as evidence.
The State Department
and Clinton campaign did not respond to requests for comment.
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