How were they illicitly read?
According to Senate Sergeant at Arms William Pickle's final report, some folders were not sufficiently protected on the servers used by the Judiciary commitee.
I think the statement that they were accessed by a "simple click" is a little too kind.
from the report:
"The clerk first became aware that he could access the files of Democratic staff some time in October or November of 2001. He made this discovery after watching the Committee's Systems Administrator perform some work on his computer. An admittedly curious person, the clerk attempted to duplicate what the System Administrator had done. In so doing, he was able to observe all of the network's other users' home directories."
Documents were passed around, and though some of the recipients testified that they shredded the docs and admonished the clerk, no one did anything to help fix the problem or bring it to anyone's attention.
About 4600 were downloaded over 18 months, some were leaked.
the full report is at:
http://news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/senate/pickle30404rpt1.html