USA-ELECTION/CLINTON-EMAILS-STATE DEPARTMENT Dozens of Clinton emails recently classified - State Department

Record ID: 145552

  • Title: USA-ELECTION/CLINTON-EMAILS-STATE DEPARTMENT Dozens of Clinton emails recently classified - State Department
  • Date: 31st July 2015
  • Summary: WASHINGTON DC, UNITED STATES (JULY 31, 2015)(STATE TV) DEPUTY SPOKESMAN FOR THE UNITED STATES STATE DEPARTMENT, MARK TONER ENTERING PRESS BRIEFING ROOM JOURNALIST ASKING A QUESTION (SOUNDBITE)(English) DEPUTY SPOKESMAN FOR THE UNITED STATES STATE DEPARTMENT, MARK TONER, SAYING: "You know as we go through the contents of these e-mails, we've talked about this many times, we
  • Embargoed: 15th August 2015 13:00
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  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVA1X7SPHCRYWZ2UY8HV8W9PZVOE
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: Dozens of e-mails on the private e-mail account that Hillary Clinton used when secretary of state were recently classified by the government, the State Department said on Friday, giving Republican critics more ammunition against the Democratic presidential hopeful.
    The e-mails, released by the State Department under a judge's order, date from the early period of Clinton's 2009-2013 tenure as America's top diplomat.
    The front-runner for the Democratic nomination in the November, 2016 election, Clinton is under scrutiny for using a private e-mail account for her work as secretary of state.
    Many of the e-mails were heavily redacted and marked as "confidential" only this week before they were made public, meaning that Clinton was not aware when she sent or received them that their content might later be regarded as classified.
    A State Department spokesman said today that no e-mails had been released by Clinton that were considered classified at the time they were sent, and had only now been upgraded.
    "You know as we go through the contents of these e-mails, we've talked about this many times, we need to look at whether portions of them need to be upgraded in terms of classification. And so as we review these, and I explained it just now, they go through the regional bureaus, they go through various offices in the State Department, it's a, as I said, multi-layered process," said Deputy Spokesman Mark Toner.
    The 1,356 e-mails released on Friday were the third batch from 30,000 or so e-mails from Clinton's private account that she handed over to the State Department after she left office.
    Government agencies that reviewed the latest collection before release deemed that several dozen contain material that is "confidential," the lowest level of classification.
    "In this production, yes, portions of 37 documents, many of them duplicates, but they were upgraded to confidential," said Toner.
    Opponents accuse her of playing loose with secret information and transparency laws, but Clinton says she broke no laws or rules by eschewing a standard government e-mail account.
    And the State Department confirmed today that so far they had not come across any e-mails that were considered classified at the time.
    "To date we've not seen any classified, information that should have been classified at the time. We've upgraded some of this information, and that's a very common practice. But we've not seen anything, as we've conducted this review, that indicates any information should have been classified at the time," said State Department Spokesman Toner.
    The classified e-mails released on Friday dealt with a range of topics from Lebanon to Myanmar.
    While Clinton is way ahead in polls of Democratic candidates, several surveys have found a majority of voters find her untrustworthy, a perception exacerbated by the e-mail controversy.
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