Did Hillary Clinton's Email Cause Shahram Amiri's Execution?

Iranian nuclear scientist Shahram Amiri defected to the US in 2009 and received millions of dollars from the CIA in exchange for valuable information regarding Iran’s nuclear programs. He returned to Iran the following year and was hanged last week after being convicted of spying for the US. 

In looking through the thousands of emails Hillary Clinton was forced to hand over, officials have located communications between Clinton and policy adviser Jake Sullivan that seem to refer to Amiri. While it is still unclear whether those emails put Amiri’s life at risk, it is very possible that Clinton’s lackadaisical attitude towards national security compromised the scientist and led him straight to the noose. 

“In the emails that were on Hillary Clinton’s private server, there were conversations among her senior advisers about this gentleman,” said Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) this Sunday on CBS News. “That goes to show just how reckless and careless her decision was to put that kind of highly classified information on a private server. I think her judgment is not suited to keep this country safe.”

Amiri claimed he was kidnapped by the US government when he returned to Iran in 2010. He was hailed as a hero and a “double agent,” which makes his recent death even more confusing. We suspect Tehran’s recent decision to hang the scientist was either a) the result of Iranian intel hacking into Clinton’s server and learning the truth about Amiri or b) Tehran’s way of scaring other scientists away from helping the US amid growing discontent. 

Former United Nations Ambassador John Bolton spoke on Fox News this week to explain just how significant and troubling Amiri’s death really is:

“It’s the kind of episode that makes counterintelligence officials crazy because the possibilities are nearly infinite,” says Bolton. The former ambassador theorizes that Amiri returned to Iran not because he was a double agent, but because “the Ayatollah threatened or blackmailed his family members or colleagues.” The whole story “demonstrates just how deadly serious the Iranian nuclear weapons program is and just how high the stakes are.”

In terms of Hillary’s role in the issue, Fox News cites a particularly disturbing email sent from Sullivan to Clinton:

“The Gentleman…has apparently gone to his country’s interests section because he is unhappy with how much time it has taken to facilitate his departure. This could lead to problematic news stories in the next 24 hours.” 

Did Hillary know that sending Amiri home would lead to his death? This email suggests that Hillary and her team were more concerned with bad publicity than with the life of a man the US should have been protecting.

“It’s so typical of the Hillary Clinton operation; it is all about optics and it is all about politics,” says Bolton. “How this was handled and the consequences for the United States, the possibility that other US or friendly agents inside Iran may have been rolled up when this person went back to Iran, the consequences for our ability…to know what’s going on in the Iranian nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs could have been compromised. There’s a lot more at stake here than whether Hillary Clinton was going to get a bad news story.” 

“The idea that we allowed him to be put in this position is very troubling and it mirrors other mistakes that Mrs. Clinton has made,” adds Bolton, mentioning Chinese barefoot lawyer Chen Guangcheng. The situation holds “enormous national security implications…It will be very interesting to see what her [Hillary’s] explanation is.” 

Editor’s note: The CIA has been know to adamantly refuse to reveal the identities of agents to policity maker. This is exactly why. While the motivations for thems man’s execution can never be know for certain, Hillary’s unsecure email server was open to the world, and her emails compromised this man’s safety.