NEW EMAIL BATCH
WASHINGTON — 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 phone 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.
State Department spokesman John Kirby said the classification does not necessarily mean the information was mishandled at the time it was sent or received.
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.” Matthew Lee/ already are having an impact on the way we do business, showing that even if it’s a little bumpy to start, things WILL be different this time. Good for them, good for her, bad for Cheryl & me but in the scheme of things it’s a minor indignity as compared to others coming our way. I’m happy to take one for the new team, it really is in her best interest which is all that really matters.”
The latest WikiLeaks revelations mirror similar emails by Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill, who called former Politico reporter Maggie Haberman (now with The New York Times) “safe.”
“As discussed on our call, we are all in agreement that the time is right place a story with a friendly journalist in the coming days that positions us a little more transparently while achieving the above goals,” Merrill said in a Jan. 13, 2015, email to Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook and others. “For something like this, especially in the absence of us teasing things out to others, we feel that it’s important to go with what is safe and what has worked in the past, and to a publication that will reach industry people for recruitment purposes. We have had a very good relationship with Maggie Haberman of Politico over the last year. We have had her tee up stories for us before and have never been disappointed.”