Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, has been getting advice on global warming policy from a former CIA director who was caught mishandling classified material.
New emails released by WikiLeaks from Podesta’s hacked Gmail account show the Democratic strategist and longtime Clinton ally was getting advice from John Deutch in 2014 on clean coal technology and nuclear energy.
Deutch headed the CIA during President Bill Clinton’s first term, but was replaced after Clinton was re-elected in 1996. Within days of Deutch leaving the CIA, officials discovered he had been improperly keeping classified information on personal laptop computers.
The CIA inspector general quickly launched an investigation, and found Deutch “continuously processed classified information on government-owned desktop computers configured for unclassified use during his tenure as [CIA director]” and “these unclassified computers were located in [his] Bethesda, Maryland and Belmont, Massachusetts residences, his offices in the Old Executive Office Building, and at CIA Headquarters.”
These laptops were “vulnerable to attacks by unauthorized persons,” the IG found.
Deutch and his lawyers were reportedly on the verge of taking a plea deal with the Department of Justice when Clinton pardoned him in 2001.
Ironically, Deutch reached out to Podesta in February 2016 to ask how he should respond to an inquiry from a reporter on how his keeping classified materials on laptops compared to former Secretary of State Clinton’s use of a private email server.
Before that, Deutch corresponded with Podesta in 2014 about the state of the U.S. nuclear fleet and also an “international CCS initiative” — CCS refers to carbon capture and storage technology for coal-fired power plants.
“I am happy to talk about this and I do have ideas about how an international CCS initiative should be/might be organized,” Deutch, who’s now a professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wrote to Podesta in December 2014.
“The three of us should talk.,” Podesta told Deutch. “China project is supposed to involve international partners.”
Deutch sent Podesta a memo on nuclear power in August 2014, according to WikiLeaks emails.
“I did this because of your telling me that you were concerned about this question and would welcome some outside view,” Deutch wrote. “We shall be interested in your reaction. And if you request it, we will prepare a more complete paper.”
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