The State Department confirmed Friday that it’s in the process of deciding whether 19 emails from the Colin Powell-Condoleezza Rice era contained classified information, and whether those emails should upgraded to classified.
“At the request of the State Department Inspector General, the State Department conducted a classification review of 19 emails, and decided to classify some of them during this review, a review, which I might add, is still ongoing,” State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters.
“These emails originated from Sate Department officials using their unclassified State Department email accounts during the 10 years of Secretaries of State Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell,” he added.
Kirby said the emails weren’t marked “classified” at the time they were sent. He said State’s ongoing review is on whether they should be protected today, and not whether the information should have been classified at the time.
“I can confirm that the 19 emails reflect emails sent from unclassified State Department accounts to, in some cases, personal email accounts,” Kirby added.
The announcement is the latest example of how the scandal involving the personal use of emails has plagued the State Department for almost a year now. More than 1,300 emails from then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have been classified, and as many as 29 may have to be held back as “top secret.”
But the news may bolster Clinton’s campaign. On Thursday, her campaign was already highlighting that some classified information had been put onto unsecure, personal emails of other secretaries. But Powell and many Republicans have said those older examples aren’t as egregious as Clinton’s situation, since she purposefully set up a personal email system and did all her State Department work on it.
