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State Department: 22 of Hillary Clinton’s Emails Considered Too Classified to Release First emails to be entirely withheld from public; more than 1,300 have been redacted By Byron Tau

Posted By Ruth King on January 30th, 2016

http://www.wsj.com/articles/state-department-says-22-of-clintons-emails-contain-highly-classified-information-1454101286

The State Department said it would launch its own investigation into whether top-secret information on Hillary Clinton’s personal email server was classified at the time it was sent or received—a dramatic reversal that comes just days before the Democratic presidential front-runner faces the first nominating contest in Iowa.

Department spokesman John Kirby said 22 documents containing highly classified information will be excluded entirely from the release of Mrs. Clinton’s archive. So far, more than 1,300 of Mrs. Clinton’s emails have been redacted, with portions blocked out, due to the presence of classified information, but this is the first example of emails being entirely withheld from public release.

Friday’s announcement is the first time State Department officials have said they have concerns about the classification level of some of the information contained on Mrs. Clinton’s server. Officials have previously said the redactions in the roughly 43,000 pages of her emails so far released were made for information that was classified only after the fact.

The Clinton campaign said the emails in question probably originated on the department’s unclassified system before they were ever shared with Mrs. Clinton.

Locked in a tight primary battle with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, Mrs. Clinton now faces the possibility of another investigation, led by the department she ran, into whether she compromised sensitive or classified national-security information.

The email controversy has taken a toll on Mrs. Clinton’s poll numbers—with her perceptions of honesty and trustworthiness lagging among both Democratic loyalists and the broader electorate.

In an ABC/Washington Post poll released this week, 36% of Democrats said Mrs. Clinton was honest and trustworthy, compared with 48% of Democratic-leaning voters who said the same about Mr. Sanders. A Wall Street Journal/NBC poll in October had a similar result, with 53% of all voters giving Mrs. Clinton negative marks on being “honest and straightforward.”

The Clinton campaign has long said Mrs. Clinton’s email archive didn’t contain anything marked classified. They have portrayed the fight within the Obama administration about the proper level of classification as a bureaucratic struggle between different agencies.

“We understand that these emails were likely originated on the State Department’s unclassified system before they were ever shared with Mrs. Clinton, and they have remained on the department’s unclassified system for years. And, in at least one case, the emails appear to involve information from a published news article,” said Brian Fallon, a Clinton campaign spokesman, on Friday.

“This appears to be over-classification run amok. We will pursue all appropriate avenues to see that her emails are released in a manner consistent with her call last year,” he said.

The use of a private email account was discouraged but not forbidden by State Department rules at the time Mrs. Clinton was secretary of state.

The FBI is investigating the potential mishandling of classified information on Mrs. Clinton’s server, but officials say she isn’t the target of the probe. Several inspectors-general and congressional committees are conducting their own investigations, which Mrs. Clinton’s campaign and allies have said have a partisan bias. The State Department said the Bureau of Diplomatic Security and the Bureau of Intelligence and Research would conduct the internal probe into the classification questions.

Also troubling for Mrs. Clinton’s campaign is the fact that State Department officials and intelligence-community investigators can’t discuss the details of the emails in question due to their highly classified nature. As a result, they can’t say if Mrs. Clinton sent or received the emails, who generated them initially and under what conditions highly classified information came onto her server.

“I’m not going to speak to the content of these documents. I understand there is great curiosity,” Mr. Kirby said Friday.

Separately, the release of 8,000 pages of Mrs. Clinton’s email archive will be delayed until other federal agencies can offer redactions or sign off on their release.

The State Department was expected to finish release of Mrs. Clinton’s emails Friday under orders from a federal judge, but the department said it could only produce about 1,000 pages of the remaining 9,000 pages by the deadline. State has been releasing them in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the department for access to Mrs. Clinton’s records.

The remaining pages still need to be reviewed by multiple agencies. The State Department has asked a judge for an extension, which hasn’t yet been officially granted. Despite lack of guidance from the court, State said it was releasing only 1,000 pages on Friday.

As a result, voters in the first four Democratic presidential contests will head to the polls without a complete portrait of Mrs. Clinton’s digital files at the department between 2009 and 2013. The emails became a continuing source of controversy for her campaign after it was revealed that she exclusively used a private email server for government business during her time as secretary of state.

The State Department’s proposed date for releasing the rest of Mrs. Clinton’s emails, Feb. 29, would take the release far past the first election contests—the Iowa caucuses on Monday and the New Hampshire primary on Feb. 9. The release would fall just one day before “Super Tuesday,” a potentially decisive event when voters in a dozen states and territories head to the polls.

Obama administration officials said the delayed release had no political implications and was only an effort to ensure that no sensitive or classified information was provided.

“I can tell you with full confidence that there has been no political interference in this process,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said on Friday.

The department cited an “error” in failing to submit thousands of pages to the correct agencies by the January 29 deadline. It also cited the recent blizzard that closed down much of Washington for several days.

The State Department said the remaining emails are the most complex, with multiple agencies needing to review them for release. But the department denied that they were therefore most controversial.

“The remaining emails include many that required consultation with multiple agencies, but that does not mean that these emails are more ‘controversial’ than other emails, or that the oversight that led to them not being sent to all the necessary agencies was related to their substance,” an attorney representing the department said in a court filing.

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