The Associated Press published a June 8 report that cited “security experts” who AP says claim that Clinton’s private email server may have compromised “the names of CIA personnel.” The report referenced three sources, but one of them said the risk was “theoretical” and another said he didn’t see “any particular vulnerability.” The third source, who suggested that CIA personnel names may have been compromised, was an appointee in the Bush administration and has donated to numerous Republican candidates.

The AP report’s claim relied solely on Stewart Baker, identified only as “a Washington lawyer who spent more than three years as an assistant secretary of the Homeland Security Department and is former legal counsel for the National Security Agency.” Baker said that “foreign intelligence services discovered and rifled Hillary Clinton’s server” and that they would have a key to finding the names of CIA personnel due to redacted names in released emails.

The AP did not note that Baker was appointed by Bush to the DHS and has donated thousands of dollars to Republican candidates over the past two decades, including former President Bush and GOP presidential candidates Sen. Bob Dole, Sen. John McCain, Gov. Mitt Romney, Sen. Ted Cruz, and Gov. Chris Christie. From the article:

“Start with the entirely plausible view that foreign intelligence services discovered and rifled Hillary Clinton's server,” said Stewart Baker, a Washington lawyer who spent more than three years as an assistant secretary of the Homeland Security Department and is former legal counsel for the National Security Agency.



If so, those infiltrators would have copies of all her emails with the names not flagged as being linked to the agency.



In the process of publicly releasing the emails, however, classification experts seem to have inadvertently provided a key to anyone who has the originals. By redacting names associated with the CIA and using the “B3 CIA PERS/ORG” exemption as the reason, “Presto — the CIA names just fall off the page,” Baker said.

Although the AP said multiple experts suggested that Clinton’s email server could have compromised CIA names, the other two sources cited in the report dismissed these claims as unlikely. One anonymous “U.S. official” said the risk of names being revealed is “theoretical and probably remains so at this time.” A second source, Federation of American Scientists' Project on Government Secrecy director Steven Aftergood, asserted, “I don’t think there’s any particular vulnerability here.” AP also noted that Aftergood “said even if any identities were revealed, they might be the names of analysts or midlevel administrators, not undercover operatives.”

AP’s baseless, theoretical claim follows numerous debunked theories that Clinton’s server was hacked and that it exposed human intelligence agents, mostly stoked by other conservative and unreliable sources. No evidence has come to light that Clinton’s server was hacked.