Democratic Party Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is rather well-known for exchanging emails with classified information in them, and for relaying others with classified information in them, via her unclassified, connected to the Internet, personal email server which she maintained in your New York digs. She’s also well-known for her claim that nothing she handled on that server—which was all of her State Department work as well as legitimately personal emails—was “marked classified.”
I’ll skip over the fact that the emails containing classified information were classified by that content, regardless of any markings or lack of markings, and that it’s a felony to mishandle classified materials in that way or any other, regardless of intent.
Now we know, however, that she has been lying about those markings, too.
[A] 2012 email released by the State Department appears to challenge that claim because it carries a classified code known as a “portion marking”—and that marking was on the email when it was sent directly to Clinton’s account.
Documents are marked classified in accordance with the classification level of the information contained. There are two types of markings that every document marked classified carries, and these markings identify the fact of classification—again, contrary to what the Left keeps bleating, the documents already are classified simply because they carry classified information; markings do not create the classification, they merely acknowledge it.
One type of classification marking is the marking at the top and bottom of every page of the document and on the document’s cover sheet, if any. This marking indicates the highest level of classified information contained anywhere in the document (there can be parts of the document with lesser classification, even with unclassified information).
The other type of classification marking is portion marking. Here, every paragraph is marked with the highest level of classification of the material contained within that paragraph, including paragraphs that are wholly unclassified being explicitly marked unclassified. Portion marking is more detailed than that. Here’s an excerpt from a January 2014 federal government training manual, Marking Classified National Security Information, which is part of the training Clinton had signed off as having taken when she acceded to her Secretary of State position:
This system requires that standard markings be applied to classified information…. Markings shall be uniformly and conspicuously applied to leave no doubt about the classified status of the information, the level of protection required, and the duration of classification.
…
A portion is ordinarily defined as a paragraph, but also includes subjects, titles, graphics, tables, charts, bullet statements, sub-paragraphs, classified signature blocks, bullets and other portions within slide presentations, and the like.
Such markings were present in, at the least, that 2012 email.
The “C”—which means it was marked classified at the confidential level—is in the left-hand-margin and relates to an April 2012 phone call with Malawi’s first female president, Joyce Banda, who took power after the death of President Mutharika in 2012.
“(C) Purpose of Call: to offer condolences on the passing of President Mukharika and congratulate President Banda on her recent swearing in.”
Everything after that was fully redacted before it was publicly released by the State Department—a sign that the information was classified at the time and dealt with sensitive government deliberations.
Elections have consequences.
Update: Grammar, grammar, grammar. Not always a safe space.
