FBI Reclassifies As 'Top Secret' Some Of Hillary Clinton's Released Benghazi Emails
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- As the holiday weekend began on Friday, the State Department released the first batch of Hillary Clinton's emails, and among other things they show she received sensitive information about Benghazi on her unsecure home server.
The FBI has now ordered those emails reclassified as top secret, CBS2's Marcia Kramer reported.
It could be seen as another bump in the road for Clinton's presidential campaign, and it probably doesn't help that the release of the first batch of emails came around 12:30 p.m., just as Americans were beginning Memorial Day weekend, a news cycle with fewer people paying attention.
Clinton was in Hampton, New Hampshire when the State Department released some 300 messages sent to her on her private server in Chappaqua. It was the first batch made public and included items related to the 2012 Benghazi attack in Libya in which Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed.
"I'm glad the emails are starting to come out," Clinton said.
But there was immediate controversy, because information contained in one email relating to reports of arrest of possible suspects has now been redacted, classified as "secret" at the request of the FBI. The move shows Clinton received information considered sensitive on her unsecured personal server.
"I'm aware the FBI asked one portion of one email to be held back, but that doesn't change the fact that all of the information in the emails was handled appropriately," Clinton said.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest was asked if the material should have been classified earlier and whether it should have been on a classified government server, not an unsecured one in Clinton's home.
"That's not at all a judgment I can make. This was a judgment that was made by the FBI recently in light of more recent events, even though the email was, as we know, three years old,' Earnest said.
Meanwhile, there was strident Republican push back.
"To assume a self-selected public record is complete, when no one with a duty or responsibility to the public had the ability to take part in the selection, requires a leap in logic no impartial reviewer should be required to make," said Rep Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., the head of the House committee investigating Benghazi.
Clinton was also given in-depth operational details of a visit by Stevens to Benghazi in 2011. She joked with a top aide who had to testify before Congress.
"What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, as I have rationalized for years, so just survive and you'll have triumphed," she said.
