Fun Friday: But Her Emails!

The scene of the crime. Public domain photo of the White House pool from Wikipedia.

During the Clinton administration I attended Blackhat and DEF CON, and one of the oddest stories unfolded. Against my better judgement I am telling it, mainly because I’ve told it before in public and nothing happened, but also because I fully expect no one to believe me. We’re going to get into some weird tin foil hat territory with this one.

Background

First, I’ll set the scene. During the earlier days of Black Hat and DEF CON, before it was referred to as “Hacker Summer Camp”, those pesky Feds (Federal agents for various U.S. Government agencies) that no one trusted would show up. There were three groups of them. First was the largest group of Feds which were the working Feds. They were there to mainly spy on foreign intelligent agencies that had sent folks there to attend Black Hat and/or DEF CON for whatever reason, although part of them were scoping out all of those evil hackers. The rest of the Fed attendees fell into two remaining categories: Fed attendees that tried to hide the fact that they were Feds, and Fed attendees that were openly attending as Feds and could care less if “spotted”. Remember this was at the height of the whole “Spot the Fed” thing.

It should be noted that even though some of the Feds were rather open about their attendance, there was still a lot of distrust between Feds and hackers back in those early days, and they tended to stay in their respective social circles. Therefore in some of those hallway or poolside group conversations, before someone would say something sensitive they might get elbowed by a friend, or you’d watch what you’d say in those groups unless someone you trusted vouched for people you didn’t know. Granted this applied to Feds and non-Feds for the more paranoid, but you get the idea. It was in one of those groups where the beginning of this story unfolds.

Also just a bit more background to set the paranoia level - even though it was discussed in hacker circles, most of the public was either unaware of or disbelieved the existence of government programs like ECHELON, and many hacker types took the whole government spying thing dead serious. So sometimes even openly attending Feds were looked upon as suspicious. Why were they so open? What’s their agenda, they must be up to something. You get the idea. Anyway, the story…

The Setup

It was a mixed group of hackers and rather open Feds, and we were all outside near a swimming pool just shooting the shit about all kinds of goofy things, but nothing real sensitive or secret. But as people wandered off to attend a talk or to catch a friend they saw in the distance, it reached the point where it was just myself and two Feds, and the conversation seemed to take on a more interesting tone. You see, each of these Feds thought I knew the other one well enough that they assumed I was either a Fed myself or I worked for a government contractor and was around Feds a lot. Maybe. I’m not sure, maybe it was because they were both holding beers and slowly drinking away inhibitions.

But these two Feds knew each other having apparently worked together at one point, and they were catching up on where certain mutual friends were. Every once in a while one of them would mention some name and they might ask if I knew him and I’d say shake my head and say that no I didn’t think so - mainly because it was quite clear the stories were getting better and better. And I was actively participating in this conversation, in that I was asking questions about various details or I’d ask for clarity on some aspect, so I kind of fit in.

It might be worth noting that I was completely sober as this was the afternoon as I rarely got my drink on in Vegas before evening time, so I was a bit more focused than they were.

Anyway, one Fed mentioned some individual they both knew, I of course did not know him, and the other Fed barely knew him. Anyway we were told he was on “shit detail”. So I asked the question “What is shit detail?” and I was told it was a nickname in certain Fed circles for those that worked in the Secret Service and were actually a part of the team that directly protected the President - at this time being one Bill Clinton. Now this wasn’t the case for every President, but for a decent number of them the main area of protection of the President was protecting them from themselves. They were protecting the Office as it were.

You see, if the Clintons were smoking pot or having coke parties with some of their famous friends, the Secret Service would do what they could to ensure that this information didn’t leak out or some nosy reporter stumbled into some scenario. Therefore you had Feds that had gone into this government job as gun-ho supporters of the law and of justice, but they now had to turn a blind eye to some of this immoral and sometime illegal behavior to simply preserve the integrity of the Office of the President. You know, so that when we went and dropped bombs on foreign people overseas everyone would take us seriously as world leaders. In other words, shit detail.

The Weird Tale

Now I wasn’t told of specific coke or pot parties, and from the general conversation the Clintons were certainly not alone in their indiscretions or disregards, as it seems the most common thing Presidents did was violate their marriage vows (the second most common thing involved alcohol). So this Fed relayed a story that upped the ante in this regard quite a bit. I think one of us had referenced the Lewinsky scandal and how Hillary must be pissed when this Fed said “she’s only pissed because Bill got found out.” Anyway…

It seems his Secret Service Fed friend was walking around on some type of patrol or report of noise at the swimming pool, and while investigating this with a Fed co-worker went into the pool area. A naked Hillary and a naked (and at the time somewhat famous television star) female companion giggled, scrambled out of the water, and ran out of the pool area. These two Feds just stood there with their mouths open, and I guess had to report that one of the Clintons was taking a late-night dip. He did not say if there was some type of sexual relationship - they could have simply been drunk and decided to go skinny dipping - but the two ladies found it amusing they’d been caught. Ah yes, the joys of shit detail indeed.

In Vegas our fully-clothed poolside conversation continued for few minutes, but later either something I said or asked triggered a question which was along the lines of “Hey wait a minute, are you not a Fed?” to which I answered truthfully and said no, I was a hacker, and they both cracked up laughing saying things like “I thought he was with you!” and “I though you knew him!” Then the story-telling Fed remembered his Hillary story and started saying things along the lines of “oh my god I cannot believe I told you that, Jesus I could get in a lot of trouble for that” while still sipping his beer, shaking his head, but still laughing at his mistake.

Now I could end the story there, but it isn’t quite over. There is more, but first I need to set up a bit more extra background.

An Odd Connection

Again, remember this was a time before Hepting v. AT&T, when the government spying thing was considered tin-foil-hat-bullshit-paranoia despite things like Operation Mockingbird and other related things coming to light in a post-Watergate world. Note that ages ago a failing New York newspaper was purchased by a former CIA employee, renamed the National Enquirer, would often put out strange material that was largely dismissed by mainstream journalism, and could potentially be used to place stories that were true but seemed so outlandish that mainstream press avoided the story. So I’m implying the CIA used media propaganda of sorts? Apparently so, as one can read from this link from the CIA’s website itself. This was known in the ‘90s at least in the paranoid circles I ran in.

After DEF CON I came home and told my wife and a few NMRC folk about the Hillary story. I didn’t approach the media about it or anything, but then while at the grocery store about 3 weeks after DEF CON, at the checkout stand I saw a copy of the National Enquirer with a story mentioned on the front cover about “Hillary Clinton caught in lesbian affair” and mentioned a swimming pool.

I grabbed the rag newspaper and read the story. All of the facts from my Fed encounter story about the friend’s “shit detail” Hillary encounter were there - and this was a mere three weeks after it was accidentally “leaked” to me.

Conclusion

Was the leak via this Fed at DEF CON the reason this story appeared in the Enquirer? It never made it into the mainstream press, because remember back then if it was in the Enquirer, mainstream press considered it some type of fabrication. It could have been a coincidence I guess, but all of the details were the same. Regardless, it made me realize that my tin foil hat apparently had not gone out of fashion.