Exclusive: Dozens of Clinton emails were classified from the start, U.S. rules suggest

[AppalachianLeftist]

For months, the U.S. State Department has stood behind its former boss Hillary Clinton as she has repeatedly said she did not send or receive classified information on her unsecured, private email account, a practice the government forbids.

While the department is now stamping a few dozen of the publicly released emails as "Classified," it stresses this is not evidence of rule-breaking. Those stamps are new, it says, and do not mean the information was classified when Clinton, the Democratic frontrunner in the 2016 presidential election, first sent or received it.

But the details included in those "Classified" stamps — which include a string of dates, letters and numbers describing the nature of the classification — appear to undermine this account, a Reuters examination of the emails and the relevant regulations has found.

The new stamps indicate that some of Clinton's emails from her time as the nation's most senior diplomat are filled with a type of information the U.S. government and the department's own regulations automatically deems classified from the get-go — regardless of whether it is already marked that way or not.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/08/21/us-usa-election-clinton-emails-idUSKCN0QQ0BW20150821

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It's over.

[frylock]

1. frist!

[beam me up scottie]

3. Scootch over.

I brought liquid refreshments.

[Agschmid]

2. That remains to be seen.

I mean really she has been through "scandal" after "scandal" and keeps going, I really don't wish any ill will upon her and her supporters.

[stevenleser]

4. Your editorializing is hilarious. What you and many folks seem to forget is...

... that if this was sent to her state.gov email and she replied, the problem is exactly the same. State.gov is not supposed to be for handling classified information. So the fact this was sent to her personal account and she forwarded it on from there is no different from the state.gov email.

I mentioned this on the radio show of a conservative radio host on Sirius the other day and he and his guest got a shocked look as if I raised an issue they hadn't considered.

Obviously they hadn't and apparently neither have you. The fact that classified information was mishandled has nothing to do with the private server. The state.gov email is not supposed to be used for classified information either.

[AppalachianLeftist]

5. What if she sent classified documents to people who weren't official government employees?

Because... she did:

"Clinton and her senior staff routinely sent foreign government information among themselves on unsecured networks several times a month, if the State Department's markings are correct. Within the 30 email threads reviewed by Reuters, Clinton herself sent at least 17 emails that contained this sort of information. In at least one case it was to a friend, Sidney Blumenthal, not in government."

[leftofcool]

6. And that has been debunked about 10 times already

[AppalachianLeftist]

7. Link?

And to a source just as reputable as Reuters, please.

[leftofcool]

12. Did you miss that Blumenthal spoke to Trey Gowdy's group and was cleared?

I thought it was big news.

[AppalachianLeftist]

14. Take it up with Reuters.

This was just published tonight.

[stevenleser]

9. Yes, and mistakes like this happen all the time. There are two relevant questions.

#1 - Was the release of the classified info a genuine mistake or was it malicious.

#2 - How much damage would the information have caused if it were released or somehow leaked or hacked.

The other statement/question I made/asked that seemed to perplex the radio host and his former CIA agent guest was when I said to the CIA guest, "My recollection is, it seems that inadvertent release of classified information happens all the time, particularly by civilians in government. Wouldn't you say that's true" And of course the former CIA agent had to say yes, and I knew he would because I knew the answer before I asked it.

Related to #2, there is a question about Top Secret/SCI information being released on 3 emails. That's a problem. Because those documents usually have stamps all over them indicating their level of classification. But its also possible that the relevant information was copied and pasted and then sent to Secretary Clinton's private email which she then forwarded on to other folks.

The investigators have these emails and we will know for sure about all of this one way or the other. One thing I know from past investigations of the Clintons, at the end, it usually turns out that they did nothing wrong. Benghazi, Whitewater, Vince Foster, etc. The one time they were caught, Bill got a blowjob. BFD.

[AppalachianLeftist]

10. I guess we'll find out soon enough.

As crazy and exaggerated as those past scandals were, it doesn't absolve her of this.

Hopefully she can make that case you laid out before a judge (if it goes that far) and we can put this in the rearview.

If not, I'm glad we have an excellent candidate trailing not far behind.

[leftofcool]

13. This will go only as far as Trey Gowdy curling up in the fetal position.

In fact, I believe the tables have already been turned.

[DURHAM D]

17. LOL - this is a story about Larry Klayman (Judicial Watch)

seeking Huma's employment records.

[candelista]

18. "Mistakes"?

For a mistake, this is too big.

[stevenleser]

20. It's actually not big at all and yes, a mistake. nt

[Rosa Luxemburg]

8. If it says new stamps it means

that they weren't classified to begin with. Someone has come along and is trying to stamp them now.

They should scrutinize all Bush, Cheney, Rice and Rumsfeld's emails.

[frylock]

11. It's born classified

"It's born classified," said J. William Leonard, a former director of the U.S. government's Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO). Leonard was director of ISOO, part of the White House's National Archives and Records Administration, from 2002 until 2008, and worked for both the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations.

"If a foreign minister just told the secretary of state something in confidence, by U.S. rules that is classified at the moment it's in U.S. channels and U.S. possession," he said in a telephone interview, adding that for the State Department to say otherwise was "blowing smoke."

[Recursion]

16. OK, one sentence is really misleading there

she did not send or receive classified information on her unsecured, private email account, a practice the government forbids.

Well... yes... but the government also forbids sending emails containing classified material to a government server, too. There's a completely physically separate network that is used, and it's a completely different email address.

If her state.gov email address received classified material, that is a problem (for the sender), and it has nothing to do with where the server was.

[candelista]

19. It's not just "misleading"; it's false.

That's the point of the Reuters article. The stuff she received and sent was "born classified." Any foreign minister, Hillary included, knows that government information shared in confidence between diplomats is sensitive and must not be shared over and insecure medium.