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Wikileaks Shows How & When of Podesta Hack

(CN) - The latest publication of Wikileaks emails hacked from Hillary Clinton campaign chair John Podesta includes the email that may have started it all. The email, sent on March 19, 2016, contained the subject line "Someone has your password."

"Hi John, Someone just used your password to try to sign in to your Google account," Charles Delavan, an IT worker for the Clinton campaign, wrote to Podesta.

The email showed the individuals who attempted and perhaps succeeded in gaining access to Podesta's account were from Ukraine, bolstering claims of Russian involvement in the hacks.

Delvan then fretfully told Podesta's chief of staff Sara Latham to have her boss change his password immediately.

"This is a legitimate email," he wrote. "John needs to change his password immediately, and ensure that two-factor authentication is turned on his account."

The hacked emails have since been released by Wikileaks in a trickle of about 2,000-email tranches, released daily. Wikileaks is a nonprofit organization committed to releasing secret or private information regarding government interactions.

While the disclosures that have come about as a result of the email hack have yet to hurt Hillary Clinton's campaign in any discernable manner, they have provided insight into the campaign's machinations as they mobilized against U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders in the primary for the Democratic nomination and then Donald Trump in the contest for the presidency.

A recent memo showed how Teneo Consulting, a firm run by long-time Clinton aide Douglas Band, may have intermingled Bill Clinton's business affairs with his charitable work, his political campaigning on behalf of candidates and personal affairs such as family vacations.

Another set of emails raise questions about whether Hillary Clinton was pressured to provide favors for foreign dignitaries who contributed enormous sums to the Clinton Foundation, run by her husband and daughter.

"This was HRC's idea, our office approached the Moroccans and they 100 percent believe they are doing this at her request," top Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin wrote to Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook about a potential scheduling conflict with leadership in Morocco. "The king has personally committed approximately $12 million both for the endowment and to support the meeting."

Abedin added in the email, written in early 2015: "She has created this mess and she knows it."

Another email written by longtime Clinton and Obama ally Cheryl Mills appears to indicate Obama was being duplicitous when he told reporters that the first time he learned of Hillary Clinton's use of a private server while at the State Department was when he read about it in the news.

"We need to clean this up - he has emails from her - they do not say state.gov," Mills wrote to numerous Clinton staffers in March 2015, when news of the scandal first broke.

There is also the revelation of the Wall Street speeches, which one Clinton ally characterized as "accommodationist." The emails show a candidate uninterested in a punitive approach toward Wall Street bankers, who remain the object of ire for many Americans who feel the economic crash and slow recovery are due to their bungling and greed.

Clinton's discussion with bankers behind closed doors diverges from some of the public pronouncements she's made about being tough on Wall Street and crafting policy that abets an economy for everyone, not just the 1 percent.

In a speech to Goldman Sachs, Clinton spoke of the need to have both a public and private position to be successful in politics, a stunning admission for someone who faces criticism from both sides of the political spectrum about being disingenuous and inauthentic.

"You just have to sort of figure out how to getting back to that word, 'balance' how to balance the public and the private efforts that are necessary to be successful politically," she said to the group of bankers.

She then linked politics to the old adage of making sausage: it's ugly to look at, but in the end the nation ends up where it should.

"But if everybody's watching, you know, all of the backroom discussions and the deals, you know, then people get a little nervous, to say the least," Clinton continued. "So, you need both a public and a private position."

In the Wall Street speeches, Clinton also talked about her dream for open borders and open economies something seized on by the right, which continues to fret over the economic and cultural impacts of immigration along the southern border.

"My dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders, sometime in the future with energy that is as green and sustainable as we can get it, powering growth and opportunity for every person in the hemisphere," Clinton said in one of the speeches.

So far, these revelations have angered some on both the right and left. But her core support hasn't defected, as most understand she is a moderate who tends to consider all the alternatives and try and find the center.

For Podesta, the hacked emails have produced some embarrassing moments. They divulge how he and Clinton allies often criticize the candidate sharply, expressing exasperation over her inability to provide a heartfelt apology for the private server scandal.

"I mean what is really the big deal to say I made a mistake with having two emails and I'm sorry," Podesta associate Neera Tanden wrote. "Everyone wants her to apologize. And she should. Apologies are like her Achilles heel."

Tanden, president of the liberal think tank Center for American Progress founded by Podesta, has some of the most colorful emails in the nearly 30,000 that have been released thus far.

"Do we actually know who told Hillary she could use private email? And has that person been drawn and quartered?" Tanden asked in an email sent to Podesta on July 24, 2015. "Like whole thing is fucking insane."

Podesta doesn't escaped unscathed either, as he sent an email with the subject header "Needy Latinos and 1 easy call." Another email in the batch refers to outreach in the Latino community as "taco bowl engagement."

To date, the email alerting Podesta to the hack is the most recent one available, although Wikileaks has hinted it may have access to emails dated much later.

The organization has about 20,000 emails left to drop in the 11 days leading up to Election Day.

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