Amid the first release of emails sent to and from a private email network used for official business by then-department head Hillary Clinton, the State Department said that electronic communications are routinely given “upgraded” security classification “several times every month” in response to public records requests.
Acting department spokesperson Marie Harf said that backward-looking reviews led to an increase in pre-publication classification of “less than two sentences” in the 296-page Friday dump.
The phrases, part of a 2012 email sent to Clinton, were upgraded to “secret”–the only classification above “confidential”–after an FBI request, Harf said. An inter-agency classification review of the emails held on the 2016 presidential candidate’s server is currently underway. The panel is currently deciding what, of the remaining cache, can be published—per the wishes of the Department and Clinton–by Freedom of Information Act publication standards.
Backward-looking classifcation, Harf said, is normal before the release of public records, and permissible through FOIA guidelines and Executive Order 13526. She also took pains to stress that an “upgrade” doesn’t prove that state secrets were mishandled.
Harf said that the degree to which information is sensitive changes over time, particularly if disclosure could impact foreign relations.
She could not, however, say, when asked, how often the State Department typically “upgrades” emails sent by officials using private accounts, as Clinton did.
In March, The New York Times revealed that, as top envoy under President Obama, Clinton conducted official business with her own email network—ClintonEmail.com. She subsequently selected 55,000 pages worth of emails that she asked the State Department to review for publication. Public releases weren’t previously scheduled until January 2016, according to the Department.
The emails published Friday had been among those tendered in February to the House Select Committee on Benghazi with “very few redactions,” Harf said. The exchange was made after the committee and the department agreed that staffers working for the former would not release “public information that is sensitive and inappropriate for release,” she added.
On Thursday, The Times revealed that it had about one-third of the 850 emails turned over to the committee.
