“Another possible area of criminal exposure for Pagliano is that he wasn’t cleared to have access to classified information.”
Pagliano was an IT guy at the State Department. If he didn’t have a security clearance, how could he work on the computers there? These computers would be chock full of classified information, and he would need full administrative access to troubleshoot problems.
If he had no clearance he was not working on State Department IT or a member of the Foreign Service. I was and have retired, and was IT. His clearance would have been TS-Crypto per state requirements for Information Management Specialists.