The State Department insisted Tuesday that it has no way to assess whether some of the newly classified information revealed in former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emails should have been classified at the time it was sent.
“We can’t go back in time and judge accurately what the conditions were, what the circumstances were of that information at the time it was shared with the secretary, and make a judgment on that,” said spokesman Mark Toner.
Toner spoke less than a day after State released thousands of additional pages of Clinton’s emails, and said that about 150 emails contained information that they are now treating as classified. That brings the total number of emails with classified information on them to nearly 300.
Toner’s claim that State has no way to determine whether that information was classified at the time it was sent led several reporters to ask, “why not?” Some implied it should be an easy thing for State to know what information is currently classified, compare that to the information in Clinton’s emails, and render a verdict.
But Toner said it’s simply not that easy.
“It’s very difficult for us… to go back and to judge what the circumstances were at the time this information was shared, and to make a judgment on whether that information was classified at the time,” he said. “It’s not a black and white issue, it’s not a clear issue.”
Instead, State said that so far, it hasn’t found any information that was marked as “classified” in Clinton’s emails. Some reporters challenged him to say that most likely, a someone at State mishandled classified information and put it into Clinton’s unprotected email system.
But even though Toner said State really can’t tell, he said he rejects that theory, and said some information released under the Freedom of Information Act is typically redacted because it’s too sensitive. Toner also insisted that it happens all the time that old information can suddenly become classified, even though he admitted, “It’s hard for me to give examples of that from the podium.”
Reporters then challenged Toner to dispute the idea that information usually becomes less sensitive over time, not more sensitive. “There’s examples of both,” he said, although he didn’t provide any.
More broadly, Toner said at this point, State is more worried about whether making the information public now is a problem, and less worried about how it was classified five years ago.
“We’re looking at how this could be perceived now upon public release, and that’s been our focus here,” he said. “How do we process these and how do we ensure that any sensitive information now is redacted appropriately.”
Toner also dodged questions about whether it’s possible that some State Department employees might get in trouble later for sending information classified at the time.
“That’s not for me to speak to from this podium today,” he said. “Our role is to process this FOIA request.”
After almost 20 minutes, when a reporter asked if he could move on to a new topic, Toner said, “I’d love to.”
