New Clinton e-mails released with redactions for now-classified items
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Version 0 of 1. Thirty-four of nearly 2,000 e-mails from Hillary Rodham Clinton’s private server that were newly released Friday by the State Department contained information now deemed classified, a department spokesman said. The significance of that figure, and the level of overall concern about possibly compromised classified information, is a subject of some disagreement between the State Department and the intelligence community. Nearly all of the e-mails were redacted to some extent, some with the names of their senders or receivers blocked out, others with lines and paragraphs excised, some completely blank. All of the documents date from 2009 — the first year of the Obama administration and Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state — or early 2010. Many contain personnel information about potential staffers in the new administration, apparently removed for reasons other than security sensitivities. The excisions themselves bear no indication of why they were redacted. The most sensitive subject matter, however, appears to deal largely with Honduras, where Clinton was juggling policy related to a 2009 government overthrow, and the Middle East. Disputes between diplomats and the intelligence agencies over how to handle the communications surfaced last week, when I. Charles McCullough III, inspector general of the intelligence community, made a “security referral” to the Justice Department about potentially classified material related to Clinton’s private server. [Probe sought into Clinton e-mails] In a Friday news release, McCullough said he was concerned about both the existence of the server — from which Clinton earlier this year turned over 55,000 pages of e-mails she said were work-related — and a thumb drive of the material held by Clinton attorney David Kendall. McCullough also said that a cursory review of about 40 of the documents at the State Department revealed four instances of “Secret” information that should not be publicly released. He argued that intelligence reviewers should be given access to all 55,000 pages but said the State Department had refused on “jurisdictional” grounds. In recent weeks, the State Department has allowed a number of McCullough’s representatives to sit in on its efforts but has refused to turn over a complete set of the documents for an independent intelligence evaluation, according to Andrea Williams, spokeswoman for McCullough’s office. The inspector general, she said, remained unsatisfied. The intelligence community has not disputed Clinton’s insistence that none of the materials in her e-mails contained information that was classified at the time she sent them. There are two ways in which the information now can be deemed classified: Reviewers determine that it should have been classified in the first place, or it can be “upgraded” to the classification under new regulations. Friday’s release is the second pursuant to a court order under the Freedom of Information Act to review and release all 55,000 pages. An initial 3,000 pages released at the end of June contained 25 security redactions made by the State Department. Diplomats and intelligence officials agreed that classification can be subjective, and one department’s idea of sensitive information may not comport with another’s. The State Department insists that none of the reviewed Clinton e-mails contained “Secret” information and that all sensitive items they found were deemed “Confidential,” the lowest level of classification. A separate tranche of Clinton e-mails, spanning about 900 pages culled because they related to Libya, was released in May. Those documents had been requested by the House Select Committee on Benghazi, which is investigating the September 2012 attack on U.S. diplomatic and CIA compounds in the Libyan city that killed four U.S. officials, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens. The e-mail controversy and the revelation last spring that Clinton used her private e-mail server to conduct official business have added fuel to the committee, which itself is embroiled in controversy. The Republican majority has said it has a duty to explore Clinton’s activities surrounding the attacks, while Democrats have claimed it is a fishing expedition whose purpose is to undermine Clinton’s presidential campaign. Clinton is to testify Oct. 22 before the committee, which has also requested it be given all e-mails from 10 top Clinton aides during her State Department tenure. Most of the newly released e-mails were not initiated by Clinton but sent to her by aides, many by chief of staff Cheryl Mills. There was little revelatory information but many personnel and scheduling notes. As with those previously released, the new e-mails indicated that Clinton rarely used that method of communication for policy matters. Some contained press clippings or schedules or were devoted to fashion advice praise from subordinates for a speech or media appearance. Sidney Blumenthal, an aide from the Bill Clinton presidency who remained in close contact with Hillary Clinton and wrote numerous previously-released Libya e-mails, appears again with advice and purported inside information on European governments. At one point, Blumenthal asks Clinton to meet with Joe Wilson, a former U.S. diplomat who served in Africa. After she does so, Blumenthal passes along a note from Wilson thanking her and noting that he is now working for Symbion, an engineering and construction company “that has been hugely successful in Iraq and Afghanistan.” |