One Hillary Clinton spokesman has called the situation “overclassification run amok.” | Getty Top Clinton adviser sent 'top secret' messages to her private account Jake Sullivan both initiated email conversations and forwarded along messages with sensitive information, sources say.

Hillary Clinton's top national security and foreign policy staffer Jake Sullivan was one of the authors of messages that appeared on several Hillary Clinton email chains recently labeled "top secret" by the State Department, according to multiple intelligence sources who have seen the correspondence.

Sullivan, then deputy chief of staff to the secretary of state, is now senior policy adviser to the 2016 Democratic front-runner. Sullivan’s lawyer Beth Wilkinson did not respond to a request for comment.


Sullivan both initiated email conversations and also forwarded along messages with sensitive information, and he sometimes added additional content on the email chains in question, according to the sources. Those chains are now maintained at the highest classification level for national security information, though the campaign has long maintained they were not marked classified at the time they were sent.

The news that Sullivan was among those sending sensitive information is in some ways unsurprising, given his position at the State Department and his closeness to Clinton. But if the emails show that he mishandled sensitive information, one of Clinton's closest aides could come in for further investigation and scrutiny by congressional investigators.

“I can only tell you that his [Jake Sullivan’s] email account initiated a number of emails,” said one source who identified Sullivan but spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the issue. Since the emails have been withheld from public view, the senders’ names are not a matter of public record.

When asked to confirm Sullivan’s participation in the “top secret” email chains, a separate intelligence source familiar with the investigation did so, but with a caveat: “The person in question is one of the primary participants and instigators but by no means the only one,” the source said.

A third source said that Sullivan was one of about three individuals who sent such content to Clinton. It is unclear who else was involved in the email discussions.

In a statement for this story, a State Department official said, "We are not going to speak to the content of these documents, including who sent them.”

The Clinton campaign said the controversy around Clinton's email has been orchestrated for political gain.

"For months we have had to stand by while prejudicial leaks have attempted to create a false narrative from sources hiding behind a cloak of anonymity" said Nick Merrill, a Clinton campaign spokesman. "When nothing else is known about the content of these emails, it's a remarkably irresponsible practice to be engaging in for political gain."

The State Department less than two weeks ago said for the first time that “top secret” intelligence had passed through Clinton’s personal email server. Previously, the department had spent months pushing back against claims by intelligence agencies that some of her messages should be classified at such a high level.

Now, though, State has moved to classify and withhold a total of seven email chains and 37 pages of messages — including 22 emails in total — from its monthly release of Clinton's correspondence mandated by a federal court. State has also told lawmakers privately that the department is also launching their own internal probe into how such “top secret” information wound up on Clinton’s server.

The FBI, meanwhile, is continuing its investigation of whether Clinton’s homemade email set-up ever put classified information at risk. The agency is also interviewing top Clinton aides about whether they had any concerns about the content of some of the messages. The campaign would not say if Sullivan has been interviewed by the FBI.

Congressional Republicans probing Clinton's email setup have two main questions: how the information got on an unclassified system, and whether anyone ever instructed aides to send such sensitive content through unsecured means.

Senate Intelligence Ranking Democrat Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) last week said Clinton was not the originator of any "top secret" email chains. Sources told POLITICO, however, that she did chime in and the conversation flowed both ways, a point Feinstein also acknowledged to Bloomberg.

Asked Tuesday about Sullivan, Feinstein said "I don't know anything about Jake Sullivan and the emails," she said. "I've never heard it before... I've seen the emails but I don't register on Jake Sullivan."

Sullivan has been Clinton’s top policy aide for years and sent Clinton a large chunk of the nearly 1,600 emails that have now been upgraded to “confidential” — a lower level of classification. He served as national security adviser to Vice President Joe Biden and acted as deputy policy director on Hillary Clinton's 2008 campaign. Before that the Yale grad served as chief counsel and senior policy adviser to Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), and he clerked for both a Second Circuit Court of Appeals judge as well as Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, according to his biography.

In two other instances, Clinton had asked Sullivan to send sensitive information. In early January, the State Department released a June 2011 email exchange where Clinton asked Sullivan to send her a talking points document on an unsecured network for convenience. The document was scheduled to be forwarded over to Clinton over State’s secured network, but the secure fax machine appears to have been broken.

“If they can't, turn into nonpaper [with] no identifying heading and send nonsecure," Clinton wrote when they were having problems. "Non-paper" is a diplomatic term for a discussion draft or memo that does not represent the official position of a government or negotiator.

Republicans on Capitol Hill seized on the message, arguing that it showed “intent” and indicated Clinton may have violated laws that cover how classified material is handled. Clinton’s campaign responded that she never would have instructed an aide to send classified information on an unclassified system.

Regardless, the State Department said it found no evidence that the document was ever sent via unsecured fax.

In an earlier, February 2010 email exchange, Sullivan had to explain to Clinton that he couldn’t send her a Mideast peace-related statement from former British Prime Minister Tony Blair because it was classified. Clinton seemed irritated: “It's a public statement! Just email it,” she wrote.

Sullivan responded by explaining it was impossible to send her the information she wanted because it was stuck in State’s classified system: “Trust me, I share your exasperation. But until ops converts it to the unclassified email system, there is no physical way for me to email it. I can't even access it,” Sullivan wrote.

Clinton has repeatedly called for her messages to be made public — even the ones State now says are “top secret.” She and her defenders argue that at least some of the information being classified is in fact widely available or common knowledge. They note that under government rules, even newspaper articles can be deemed “top secret” if they reference a program or information that is so designated and has never been formally declassified.

One Clinton spokesman has called the situation “overclassification run amok.” However, one source said some of the email exchanges may have begun by simply relaying news reports, but the back-and-forth wound up including sensitive classified information that went beyond the contents of the underlying article.

House Intelligence Republican Mike Pompeo (R-Kans.), who has seen the messages but would say nothing about the senders and content, agreed with that specific point.

“Some of the information contained in these emails is not merely about newspaper articles, but rather presents risk to American national security and to our warriors assigned around the world," he said. "Those tasked with addressing this lapse of security must assume that the Chinese, Russians, Iranians or hackers around the world have been able to obtain this information held outside of secure channels. This is expensive, time-consuming and presents risks all its own.”

More recently, Democrats have pointed out that State’s inspector general also found 12 messages with information now deemed classified on a private email account of former Secretary of State Colin Powell and that of staff for Condoleezza Rice — though none reached the "top secret" level. Still, Democrats say those revelations show that the issue of retroactively classified material showing up on private servers is not restricted to just Clinton.

Jake Sherman and Josh Gerstein contributed to this report.

