It is highly likely that Vladimir Putin’s minions obtained Hillary Clinton’s emails while they were hanging out there on her insecure private server. Even former CIA Director and Defense Secretary Robert Gates has said so. (I’m sure the same applies to the intelligence services of other hostile states as well.)
Well, so what? Paul Roderick Gregory addresses the question in an intensely interesting Forbes column. Gregory reviews the course of the public disclosure of Clinton’s private email arrangement and writes:
A Kremlin penetration of Clinton’s private e-mail account would give it the world’s most complete record of her secretary of state correspondence including the almost 32,000 emails that the Clinton team deemed private and made unavailable.
Consider Vladimir Putin with a full inventory of Clinton e-mails. Putin’s KGB training was in running agents, most recruited by kompromat (compromising information) that he had gathered, meaning that he would immediately have understood the possibilities. Putin’s FSB and military security experts would be told to scour the load of e-mails for operational information, names, addresses and dates. As kompromat specialists, they would look for personal Clinton material ranging from embarrassing to compromising.
As a KGB agent who cut his teeth on kompromat, Putin would consider several options on how and when to use the Hillary file with maximum effect. If he preferred Hillary’s Republican opponent in the general election, he could release enough incriminating information (that could not be traced back to the Kremlin, of course) to scuttle her candidacy. For those who believe Putin would not dare interfere with a U.S. election, consider his strange flirtation with Donald Trump. Putin, however, may prefer Hillary to give him a sitting U.S. president on whom he has a big stack of kompromat. If Putin rules out blackmail, the Kremlin could selectively leak damaging information to U.S. allies and enemies that would weaken the United States’ hand in world affairs throughout a Clinton presidency.
Those who follow Kremlin propaganda understand that it is not necessary for Putin to have Clinton’s e-mails to cause serious damage to a Clinton presidency. All he needs is that many believe he has Hillary’s e-mails.
The whole thing here is worth reading.
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