According to officials familiar with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s plot to steal credit card numbers and other personal info belonging to top UN officials, the plot did not originate inside the State Department itself but was simply signed off on by Clinton.

Rather the CIA drew up the “wish list” of data to steal from the officials, including DNA samples and encryption passwords, that was later sent out to embassies across the world as the “National Humint Collection Directive,” signed by Clinton.

The revelation may well deflect some concerns that the Obama Administration’s State Department was doing the sort of mass spying that is usually the sole province of the nation’s assorted spying agencies, but is unlikely to quiet concerns that Clinton signed a document explicitly ordering a major crime under both international and US law.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is said to have been extremely concerned by the revelation, and spokesmen for his office said he intended to “remind” President Obama that the 1946 UN Convention makes such spying illegal.