1 Classification Upgrade In New Batch Of Clinton Emails
WASHINGTON (AP) - One document in a new batch of Hillary Clinton's emails released by the State Department on Friday contains classified information.
The department posted to its website 112 documents that the FBI recovered during its investigation into Clinton's private email server. In one email, the department censored several paragraphs that it determined contained "foreign government information" deemed "confidential" - the lowest level of classification.
Several other documents published Friday also contain classified information, but they are from email chains that were previously classified and released in earlier tranches of Clinton's email, according to the State Department.
The message in question, to Clinton from her deputy chief of staff Huma Abedin on Nov. 26, 2010, contains readouts of two telephone conversations a senior U.S. diplomat had with top leaders from the United Arab Emirates. The paragraphs with the descriptions of the calls with the Emirati officials were not marked classified when Clinton received the email. They were redacted entirely for public release under Freedom of Information Act standards on Thursday.
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State Department spokesman John Kirby said the classification does not necessarily mean the information was mishandled at the time it was sent or received.
"While foreign government information may be protected from public release, both the executive order on classification and the Foreign Affairs Manual acknowledge that FGI often can be maintained on unclassified systems," he said. "There are specific rules for how to handle FGI material given how we receive it. In other words, maintaining FGI on unclassified systems may not amount to mishandling the information."
The FBI provided the State Department with about 14,900 emails purported not to have been among the 55,000 pages of work-related documents that Clinton had turned over and had been previously released. Of those previously released, the department classified more than 2,000 emails, mostly at the "confidential" and next-highest "secret" levels. Twenty-two emails were withheld entirely from publication on grounds that they were "top secret."
Friday's email release is the latest in a series of batches from the FBI-provided documents that the department is under court order to process and release under the Freedom of Information Act. The next releases are scheduled for Nov. 3 and 4, before the 2016 presidential election in which Clinton is the Democratic nominee.
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