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 "Pls use this for reply," Clinton wrote in her email, sent from
the clintonemail.com account she set up on an unsecured, private
server in her New York home for her work as secretary of state.
Over the following hours, Mitchell wrote back to Clinton with
summaries of his conversations, including one with Spain's foreign
minister, who had briefed him on discussions with Palestinian
leaders. The State Department has redacted the summary of the
minister's thoughts, saying it is classified information.
The exchange is among dozens in a new batch of Clinton's emails
released this week that shed further light on how Clinton handled
information while she was secretary of state from 2009 to 2013.
Clinton, front-runner to be the Democratic candidate in the November
2016 presidential election, has faced steady criticism from
political opponents since it emerged in March that she used a
private set-up rather than a government-issued state.gov email
address.
Clinton has maintained she did nothing wrong. She says she sent no
information via email that was classified at the time, and received
no material marked that way.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is examining Clinton's server to
see whether information was mishandled. No evidence has emerged
suggesting Clinton's email practices harmed national security.
A review last month by Reuters of previously released Clinton emails
found 30 email threads that the State Department has marked to show
they include information shared in confidence by foreign government
officials, from prime ministers to spy chiefs.
U.S. government regulations examined by Reuters say this sort of
information, whether written or spoken, must be classified from the
start, and handled through secure, government-controlled channels.
The Clinton-Mitchell correspondence is one of 57 email threads found
by Reuters in the latest batch of emails released on Monday that the
State Department has marked as including the same type of
information.
In all the 87 email threads examined by Reuters, the State
Department has blanked out the confidential information in the
public copies, adding the classification code "1.4(B)", denoting
foreign government information.
This is the only kind of information that presidential executive
orders say is "presumed" to likely harm national security if wrongly
disclosed. State Department regulations describe it as the "most
important category of national security information" its officials
encounter.
 If the State Department's markings are correct, it appears that
Clinton and her senior staff routinely did not follow the
regulations in the department's Foreign Affairs Manual, which tells
employees they "must" safeguard foreign government information by
treating it as classified.
"It's hard to square the secretary's conduct with the strict letter
of the FAM," Steven Aftergood, the director of the Federation of
American Scientists' government secrecy project, said in an email.
The department and spokesmen for Clinton have declined requests to
explain this apparent lapse.
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UNCLEAR HOW CLOSELY REGULATIONS FOLLOWED
It is not clear if Clinton approached classified information
differently than other secretaries of state before or after.
Several career diplomats, who joined the department before Clinton's
tenure, also sent foreign government information through their
unclassified .gov email accounts, the marked redactions on Clinton's
emails show, suggesting that the regulations may be commonly ignored
in favor of speedier communications.
Asked whether John Kerry, the current secretary of state, has sent
such information via unsecured channels, a State Department
spokesman declined to say either way.
The department declined to say whether Clinton adhered to the
relevant regulations and laws while she was in charge, or whether
the secretary of state is even bound by the department's
regulations.
The department has said the information in some of Clinton's emails
is being newly classified now, but it has also said it cannot know
for sure whether the information should have been handled as
classified all along.
Nearly 8,000 emails have been released, about a quarter of the total
Clinton returned to the department last year. They are being
published in monthly batches following a federal judge's orders. The
State Department has redacted classified information from nearly 200
of them so far. All but one of them is marked "Confidential," the
lowest level of classified information.
Several emails show Clinton and her staff were mindful of handling
sensitive information with care: there are repeated references to
setting up conversations over secure telephone lines.
In a September 2010 email, Jake Sullivan, a senior aide now working
as an adviser for Clinton's presidential campaign, tells Clinton he
just met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for several
hours.
"Happy to talk secure at your convenience," he wrote. He went on to
summarize "highlights" from the conversation. Five or six lines of
text follow, all now blanked out, classified and stamped
"CONFIDENTIAL."
(Reporting by Jonathan Allen; Editing by Caren Bohan and Frances
Kerry)
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