State Dept. due to release latest batch of Clinton emails

[September 30, 2015]  NEW YORK (Reuters) - The latest batch of emails from the private server Hillary Clinton used as U.S. secretary of state is due to be released on Wednesday, days after she lamented that months of unflattering headlines about the setup were largely out of her control.

A federal judge has ordered the State Department to release all of Clinton's work emails in monthly batches through to January 2016 after a Vice News reporter sued the department under freedom of information laws.

Criticism about Clinton's decision to set up an email account connected to a server in her New York home for her work as the nation's top diplomat have dogged her for more than six months, sometimes overshadowing her campaign to become the Democratic nominee for the November 2016 presidential election.

"Well, it is like a drip, drip, drip," Clinton said on Sunday in an interview with NBC News when asked about a series of incremental revelations about her email arrangement that have followed since its existence was first reported in March. "And that's why I said, there's only so much that I can control. But what I have tried to do in explaining this is to provide more transparency and more information than anybody that I'm aware of who's ever served in the government."

Clinton apologized for the email arrangement this month, saying it was allowed but unwise.

About a quarter of the roughly 30,000 emails she returned to the State Department last year have been released so far. The State Department must produce at least another 6,000 or so on Wednesday, according to the order by U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras.

The contents of the emails released so far range from the quotidian business of an office job - in one exchange with an aide, Clinton struggles for several minutes to send a fax - to information the U.S. government says is classified, and redacted in the public copies, to protect national security.

The government forbids transmitting classified information outside secure, government-controlled channels.

Nearly 200 emails sent and received by Clinton contain classified information, although the State Department and other government agencies are currently arguing over how much of the information, if any at all, was classified at the time it was sent.

The Federal Bureau of Information is examining the server to see whether government information was mishandled.

(Reporting by Jonathan Allen; Editing by Christian Plumb)

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