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

[leveymg]

Last edited Fri Aug 21, 2015, 01:59 PM - Edit history (1)

Source: Reuters

In the small fraction of emails made public so far, Reuters has found at least 30 email threads from 2009, representing scores of individual emails, that include what the State Department's own "Classified" stamps now identify as so-called 'foreign government information.' The U.S. government defines this as any information, written or spoken, provided in confidence to U.S. officials by their foreign counterparts.

This sort of information, which the department says Clinton both sent and received in her emails, is the only kind that must be "presumed" classified, in part to protect national security and the integrity of diplomatic interactions, according to U.S. regulations examined by Reuters. "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.

. . .

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.

The information appears to include privately shared comments by a prime minister, several foreign ministers and a foreign spy chief, unredacted bits of the emails show. Typically, Clinton and her staff first learned the information in private meetings, telephone calls or, less often, in email exchanges with the foreign officials.


Read more: http://www.aol.com/article/2015/08/21/exclusive-dozens-of-clinton-emails-were-classified-from-the-sta/21225607/

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Here's the kicker, HRC received training on how to handle classified information as SOS, and proceeded to continue to use her own unsecured personal server for all Department email, nonetheless:

State Department staff, including the secretary of state, receive training on how to classify and handle sensitive information, the department has said. In March, Clinton said she was "certainly well aware" of classification requirements.

Anyone else would have been indicted by now for this.

P.S. - Did anyone else spot the part that says that Hillary sent email containing foreign gov't information to Blumenthal over her own private server? I seem to recall a couple things: 1) Blumenthal's emails to Hillary were hacked by a Romanian and released, and that's what brought public attention to this, initially; and 2), several months ago, Hillary claimed she didn't (respond to)(Correction: her spokesman used the term "solicit&quot Blumenthal's messages. She (her spokesman) appears to have misspoken, (or mischaracterize) again. See, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/30/us/politics/benghazi-emails-put-focus-on-hillary-clintons-encouragement-of-adviser.html?_r=0