WASHINGTON — Neither of the two e-mails sent to Hillary Clinton now labeled by intelligence agencies as “top secret” contained information that would jump out to experts as particularly sensitive, according to several government officials.
One included a discussion of a U.S. drone strike, part of a covert program that is widely known and discussed. A second conversation could have referred improperly to highly classified material, but it also could have reflected information collected independently, U.S. officials who have reviewed the correspondence told The Associated Press.
Still, it’s looking increasingly likely the issue of whether Clinton mishandled classified information on her home-brew e-mail server will have significant political implications in the 2016 presidential campaign.
Clinton, who has been seen from the outset as the front-runner for the Democratic nomination, agreed this week to turn over to the FBI the private server she used as secretary of state. And Republicans in Congress have seized on the involvement of federal law enforcement in the matter as a sign she was negligent in handling the nation’s secrets.
On Monday, the inspector general for the 17 spy agencies that make up what is known as the intelligence community told Congress that two of 40 e-mails, in a random sample of 30,000 messages that Clinton gave the State Department for review, contained information deemed “top secret,” one of the government’s highest levels of classification.
While neither of the e-mails was marked classified at the time they were sent, they have since been slapped with a “TK” marking, for “talent keyhole,” suggesting material obtained by spy satellites. And they also were marked “NOFORN,” meaning information that can be shared only with Americans with security clearances.
The two e-mails got those markings after consultations with the CIA and other agencies where the material originated, officials said. Some officials said they believed the designations were a knee-jerk move in a bureaucracy rife with over-classification.
Clinton didn’t transmit the sensitive information herself, they said, and nothing in the e-mails she received makes direct reference to communications intercepts, confidential intelligence methods or any other form of sensitive sourcing.
The drone exchange, the officials said, begins with a copy of a news article about the CIA drone program that targets terrorists in Pakistan and elsewhere. While that program is technically top secret, it is well-known and often reported on. Former CIA director Leon Panetta and Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, have discussed it openly.
The copy makes reference to classified information, and a Clinton adviser follows up by dancing around a top secret in a way that could possibly be inferred as confirmation, the officials said.
But a second e-mail reviewed by Charles McCullough, the intelligence community inspector general, appears more problematic, officials said. Nothing in the message is “lifted” from classified documents, they said, although they differed on where the information in it was sourced.
Some said it improperly points back to highly classified material, while others countered that it was a classic case of receiving information the government considers secret through “open source” channels.
