A State Department official refused to assure reporters Tuesday that Hillary Clinton’s private e-mail server, which contained classified information about U.S. foreign policy, was not hacked.

“I don’t have an answer for you on that,” spokesman Mark Toner said in a press briefing Tuesday. “I don’t know.”

Defense Department officials have been similarly reticent. “I think this an issue best left to the State Department,” Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook said last week. “They’ve had to address this and also Secretary Clinton. It’s not something that I think makes sense for me to get into from right here at this podium.”

That silence doesn’t mean there’s no answer to the question. Representative Mike Pompeo (R., Kan.), a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, told reporters last week that he’d inquired as to whether there was evidence that Clinton’s e-mail account was breached, but declined to say what he’d learned. “I received an answer,” he said, without even identifying who he’d asked.

Instead, Pompeo simply reiterated his opposition to Clinton’s failure to use a government account. “The protracted use of an exclusive private e-mail server to conduct the business as America’s senior diplomat is outrageously dangerous to national security,” he said.

— Joel Gehrke is a political reporter for National Review.