State Department to Withhold 22 Hillary Clinton Emails Entirely B/C They are Top Secret
BREAKING (@AP): State Department declares 22 emails on Hillary Clinton's account 'top secret'; won't release them.
From @AP: State Department now looking into whether Clinton emails were classified when they were sent.
This is the first time entire emails are being withheld.
This falls after the news that the State Dept is failing to meet their deadline for releasing Hillary's emails. Will only release 1,000 of the 9,000 that are due because they forgot to have them signed-off on by other agencies. State wants to release them February 29th after the first 4 states have voted and the Super Tuesday early voting has begun. Clearly, State is hoping Hillary has the nomination locked down before the next batch of bad email news has to be released.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/hillary-clinton-email-release-state-dept-miss-todays/story?id=36600533
For those who think this email scandal is over, they are dead wrong.
Edited to add full article by AP:
http://apne.ws/20yhIc5
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration confirmed for the first time Friday that Hillary Clinton's unsecured home server contained some of the U.S. government's most closely guarded secrets, censoring 22 emails with material demanding one of the highest levels of classification. The revelation comes just three days before the Iowa presidential nominating caucuses in which Clinton is a candidate.
The State Department will release its next batch of emails from Clinton's time as secretary of state later Friday.
But The Associated Press has learned seven email chains are being withheld in full because they contain information deemed to be "top secret." The 37 pages include messages recently described by a key intelligence official as concerning so-called "special access programs" — a highly restricted subset of classified material that could point to confidential sources or clandestine programs like drone strikes or government eavesdropping.
Department officials wouldn't describe the substance of the emails, or say if Clinton sent any herself. They also wouldn't disclose if any of the documents reflected information that was classified at the time of transmission, but indicated that the agency's Diplomatic Security and Intelligence and Research bureaus have begun looking into that question.
"The documents are being upgraded at the request of the intelligence community because they contain a category of top secret information," State Department spokesman John Kirby told the AP, describing the decision to withhold documents in full as "not unusual." That means they won't be published online with the rest of the documents, even with blacked-out boxes.
Clinton, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, has insisted she never sent or received information on her personal email account that was classified at the time. No emails released so far were stamped "CLASSIFIED" or "TOP SECRET," but reviewers previously had designated more than 1,000 messages at lower classification levels for public release. Friday's will be the first at the top secret level.
For those that Clinton only read, and didn't write or forward, she still would have been required to report classification slippages that she recognized. But without classification markings, that may have been difficult, especially if the information was in the public domain.
= new reply since forum marked as read
