Who's been reading Hillary Clinton's email?

"She thinks they're erased," said Bob Woodward of the Washington Post, whose reporting (with Carl Bernstein) brought the Watergate scandal to light. "The Chinese or Iranians probably have them."

In March of 2013, a hacker with the nom de cyber "Guccifer" posted on the Internet 13 emails sent to Ms. Clinton by Sidney Blumenthal, the Clintons' chief hatchet man during the Whitewater scandal. They indicate she was running a private intelligence network.

Hillary wanted to bring Mr. Blumenthal with her to the State Department, but his appointment was nixed by White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, apparently because of Mr. Blumenthal's attacks on Mr. Obama during the Democratic primaries.

The Guccifer emails included a dozen detailed reports on deteriorating security conditions in Libya. Though sent to Ms. Clinton by Mr. Blumenthal, they were prepared by Tyler Drumheller, a former chief of the CIA's clandestine service in Europe, who left the CIA in 2005.

Hillary's private intelligence network reminds him of Iran Contra, and of the scandal involving ex-CIA officer Ed Wilson, who was convicted in 1983 of illegally selling weapons to Libya, said Jeff Gerth, who wrote with Sam Biddle an investigative report on it.

The Blumenthal emails "are just a tiny percentage of what was going on here," said Mr. Gerth, twice winner of the Pulitzer Prize when he was a reporter for the New York Times. "We got a few pieces, but don't have anywhere near the full puzzle."

"Who authorized this network to do what they did?" Mr. Gerth asked. "Who was paying for this?"

Ms. Clinton conducted official business on a private server to evade the requirements of federal law.

"There's no doubt in my mind (that) what she did was contrary to the Federal Records Act," said Dan Metcalfe, who oversaw implementation of the Freedom of Information Act at the Justice Department.

What's really bad about what Hillary did is private servers like hers are notoriously easy to hack.

"If all she had was standard technology, it would be merely a speed bump for a sophisticated adversary to gain access to everything there," Richard C. Schaeffer Jr., a former director of information assurance at the National Security Agency, told the Washington Post.

Her personal emails could have become "a priority target for foreign intelligence services," the chairmen of the Senate committees on Foreign Relations, Intelligence, and Homeland Security said in a letter to the State Department's inspector general.

Her obsession with secrecy has caused some to call Hillary "the Democrats' Nixon." Which may be unfair to Nixon. An 18 ½ minute gap on an audio tape triggered his downfall. There are gaps of "months and months" in the few Clinton emails turned over to the House Select Committee investigating Benghazi.

Hillary has turned over 30,000 pages of emails to the State Department, which has sent about 900 pages on to the Benghazi committee. Ms. Clinton said she'd deleted 31,830 of 6

2,320 emails she sent and received while secretary of state because they were "personal." Under the law, it's up to the State Department, not Ms. Clinton, to determine what is — or isn't —"personal."

Apparently, she deleted the emails after the State Department asked for them last Oct. 28.

Hillary refused the request of Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-SC, chairman of the Benghazi committee, to turn over her server to an independent third party for analysis. Her lawyer told Rep. Gowdy last Friday (3/27) the server has been "wiped clean."

It's imperative for Congress to get the server, because it's now evidence of a potential crime, said Cornell Law Professor William Jacobson. Hillary displayed "consciousness of guilt" when she volunteered the information she'd deleted "personal" emails, he said.

A more important reason for getting the server into the hands of computer forensics experts — who often can recover data that's been "erased" — is that may be the only way we'll learn which of our secrets have been exposed to hostile foreign intelligence services.

Or, I suppose, we could subpoena the records of the Iranians and the Chinese.

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JWR contributor Jack Kelly, a former Marine and Green Beret, was a deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration.