by WorldTribune Staff, September 18, 2016

Hillary Clinton, from day one, was not assigned a state.gov email address, something that “was planned in advance,” the State Department’s former inspector general said.

“That’s a change in the standard. It tells me that this was premeditated” to skirt the rules governing federal records management, said Howard J. Krongard, who served as the agency’s watchdog from 2005 to 2008.

Related: Documents appear to implicate State Dept. in cover-up on Clinton emails, Sept. 16, 2016

“And this eliminates claims by the State Department that they were unaware of her private email server until later,” Krongard said in an interview with the New York Post. “How else was she supposed to do business without email?”

Krongard also noted the unusual absence of a permanent inspector general during Clinton’s entire 2009-2013 tenure at the State Department.

“This is a major gap. In fact, it’s without precedent,” he said. “It’s the longest period any department has gone without an IG.”

Inspectors general independently investigate agency waste, fraud and abuse. Their oversight also covers violations of communications security procedures.

“It’s clear she did not want to be subject to internal investigations,” Krongard said, adding that an email audit would have easily uncovered the secret information flowing from classified government networks to the private unprotected system she set up in her New York home.

Krongard told the Post that “the key” to the FBI’s investigation into Clinton’s alleged mishandling of classified information is determining how highly sensitive state secrets in the classified network, known as SIPRNet, ended up in Clinton’s personal emails.

“The starting point of the investigation is the material going through SIPRNet. She couldn’t function without the information coming over SIPRNet,” Krongard said. “How did she get it on her home server? It can’t just jump from one system to the other. Someone had to move it, copy it. The question is who did that?”

The Post first reported that the FBI is investigating whether Clinton’s deputies copied top-secret information from the department’s classified network to its unclassified network where it was sent to her unsecured, unencrypted email account.

  Former official says Hillary Clinton was never even assigned a State Dept. email address, Howard J. Krongard, mishandling of classfied info, State Department inspector general, WorldTribune.com