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 At issue is Moussa Koussa, a one-time intelligence chief for
Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, and the question of whether or not
his name should have been treated as a secret in an email Clinton
received four years ago from a close confidant.
Republicans, who are trying to show Clinton mishandled classified
information while secretary of state, have argued that Koussa's name
should not have been included in the email she got on her private
server from Sidney Blumenthal.
But the CIA, weighing in after the Republicans made their accusation
earlier this month, has told lawmakers that Koussa's name was not
classified, according to correspondence between the spy agency and
officials of the House of Representatives panel set up to
investigate the Sept. 11, 2012 attacks on a U.S. diplomatic facility
and nearby spy base in Benghazi, Libya.
 After months of delays and political machinations, Clinton is
scheduled to appear before the House Benghazi committee on Thursday
to answer questions about her handling of the 2012 attacks, her
controversial private email server, and the Obama Administration's
Libya policy.
After reviewing Clinton's emails in response to Freedom of
Information requests, the State Department made numerous redactions,
declaring that in some cases, the material should be considered
classified.
Earlier this month, in a reference to Koussa, the Bengahzi committee
chairman, Republican Trey Gowdy, complained that Clinton, the
front-runner in the Democratic presidential campaign, had received
an email on her private server in March 2011 with the name of "a
human source."
That represents "some of the most protected information in our
intelligence community, the release of which could jeopardize not
only national security but also human lives," Gowdy said.
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"Armed with that information, Secretary Clinton forwarded the email
to a colleague - debunking her claim that she never sent any
classified information from her private email address," he added.
Sources familiar with the redaction process said the State
Department did redact Koussa's name from the email in question but
that the department had done this as part of standard practice to
protect the privacy of individuals and not because the department
considered the data classified.
In his letter to Gowdy on Sunday, U.S. Representative Elijah
Cummings, the Benghazi committee's top Democrat, accused Gowdy of
trying to "inflate" the significance of the redacted information and
suggested that the "standard operating procedure" of the Benghazi
committee had "become to put out information publicly that is
inaccurate and out of context in order to attack Secretary Clinton
for political reasons."
(Reporting by Mark Hosenball; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh, Tom Brown)
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