State Department Releases Another Batch of Clinton Emails

The State De­part­ment has re­leased the latest batch of Hil­lary Clin­ton’s mes­sages from her time run­ning the agency, the latest dis­clos­ure from the private email sys­tem that has be­come a fo­cus of GOP polit­ic­al at­tacks in the White House race.

The over 7,000 pages pos­ted on­line, which were sent or re­ceived in 2009 and 2010, is by far the largest of the rolling monthly re­leases that State is provid­ing un­der a judge’s or­der in a high-pro­file pub­lic re­cords law­suit.

Around 150 of the newly re­leased mes­sages have been re­dac­ted be­cause an on­go­ing inter-agency re­view has de­term­ined that they con­tain clas­si­fied in­form­a­tion, State De­part­ment spokes­man Mark Toner told re­port­ers earli­er Monday.

He said that none of them were marked clas­si­fied when ori­gin­ally sent or re­ceived. Clin­ton, after ini­tially say­ing in March that there was no clas­si­fied in­form­a­tion in the sys­tem, has softened her po­s­i­tion to say that there was no in­form­a­tion that was marked clas­si­fied when sent or re­ceived.

Ac­cord­ing to pub­lished re­ports, and a scan of the mes­sages, the re­dac­ted emails in the new batch are marked “con­fid­en­tial,” which is the low­est level of clas­si­fic­a­tion.

Ques­tions about clas­si­fied con­tent has fed GOP al­leg­a­tions that Clin­ton be­haved reck­lessly with such in­form­a­tion, which is sup­posed to be sent over spe­cial se­cure net­works.  In par­tic­u­lar, the in­spect­or gen­er­al for in­tel­li­gence agen­cies has said that at least two mes­sages from a lim­ited num­ber sampled con­tained “top-secret” in­form­a­tion, the highest level of clas­si­fic­a­tion.

However, the State De­part­ment and Clin­ton’s cam­paign note that there are of­ten dis­agree­ments with­in the gov­ern­ment about what in­form­a­tion should be con­sidered clas­si­fied, and many ex­perts also say that ex­cess­ive secrecy — that is, “over­clas­si­fic­a­tion” — is a ma­jor prob­lem.

The FBI is in­vest­ig­at­ing the se­cur­ity of Clin­ton’s email sys­tem. Clin­ton turned over roughly 55,000 pages of emails from her private sys­tem to the State De­part­ment late last year. They are now be­ing re­leased as a res­ult of a Free­dom of In­form­a­tion Act law­suit brought by Vice News.

Clin­ton has said she wants the mes­sages re­leased to the pub­lic ex­ped­i­tiously. But the multi-layered State re­view, which in­cludes vet­ting by mul­tiple agen­cies, moves slowly.

Pri­or re­leases have not in­cluded any bomb­shells, but have provided a look be­hind closed doors in­to Clin­ton’s four-year ten­ure as the na­tion’s top dip­lo­mat.

They have re­vealed tid­bits such as oth­er seni­or of­fi­cials seek­ing her private emails; the wide-ran­ging scope of her in­ter­ac­tions with long­time ally Sid­ney Blu­menth­al; struggles to use a fax ma­chine; and a hand­ful of oth­er an­ec­dotes shed­ding light on her daily routine.

As be­fore, Blu­menth­al fea­tures prom­in­ently in Monday’s doc­u­ment trove.

Some of the Blu­menth­al cor­res­pond­ence in­volved two-to-three-para­graph-long memos de­scrib­ing his thoughts on the is­sues of the day. Take his memo to her about Wikileaks on Nov. 29, 2010, the day after the in­ter­na­tion­al group re­leased hun­dreds of thou­sands of State De­part­ment cables. At a press con­fer­ence on Nov. 29, Clin­ton called the re­lease an “at­tack” not only on the U.S., but also on the “in­ter­na­tion­al com­munity.”

In an email to the sec­ret­ary that even­ing, Blu­menth­al didn’t sound over the moon about her state­ment, char­ac­ter­iz­ing it as “headed in the right dir­ec­tion.” He ad­ded two para­graphs seem­ingly de­scrib­ing how State could spin the cables’ re­lease: For one, “the Wikileaks pa­pers prove that the U.S. gov­ern­ment today has been telling the truth about the threats we face in the world”; and they “prove that Amer­ic­an dip­lo­mats are hard at work at the dif­fi­cult, of­ten frus­trat­ing job of pro­tect­ing and ad­van­cing our in­terests in the world.”

Blu­menth­al also oc­ca­sion­ally for­war­ded Clin­ton art­icles high­light­ing trends or re­port­ing he ap­pears to have thought she should be aware of. In one ex­change, he sent Clin­ton a copy of an art­icle de­tail­ing the activ­it­ies of con­ser­vat­ive mega-donors Charles and Dav­id Koch pub­lished in the New York­er in 2010 with the sub­ject line: “Yes, there is a vast right wing con­spir­acy. Sid.”

An­oth­er of Blu­menth­al’s memos de­scribed his take on the GOP, out­lining for Clin­ton what his “Re­pub­lic­an sources” had to say just after the 2010 midterms and cri­ti­ciz­ing cur­rent House Speak­er John Boehner in par­tic­u­lar.

Like some earli­er re­leases, the new doc­u­ments show that the power­ful suf­fer from the same an­noy­ances and con­fu­sion as every­one else.

In one case, Clin­ton is try­ing to reach Elena Kagan a few days after she was nom­in­ated to the Su­preme Court in May of 2010. “The cell # for her be­longs to someone else ac­cord­ing to the vm. Can you get the right cell #?,” Clin­ton writes to an aide.