The Obama administration defined the Chinese cyberattack on the Office of Personnel Management as two separate breaches—a move that allowed them to hide the fact that top-secret security-clearance documents had been compromised, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.
Those security-clearance documents “contain information that foreign intelligence agencies could use to target espionage operations,” the Journal reports.
The administration originally disclosed on June 4 that personnel records had been compromised, and that the FBI suspects China was behind the hack.
U.S. officials say as many as 18 million Social Security numbers might have also been compromised, which is several times the size of previous estimates. Read more at The Wall Street Journal.
{Andy Heller-Matzav.com Newscenter}
