Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign is crying foul over details being released about emails that were forwarded to the private email server she used while secretary of state, saying "selective details," — including information that the some of the communications referred to undercover CIA officers — are being leaked to give a false impression of the communications.
"This shows yet again how the leaking of selective details gives a completely false impression about what is actually contained in the emails forwarded to Hillary Clinton," Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon told
NBC News.
"Whenever the full contents of these emails are learned, there is invariably less than meets the eye."
Three officials who saw the emails told NBC that some of the ones withheld by the State Department for being too top secret to be released referred to undercover CIA officers, including one killed in Afghanistan during a suicide bombing, but did not directly reveal their identities.
Instead, the officials said, attempts were made to make veiled references to CIA officers, and those references were deemed as classified later.
On Wednesday, though, House Intelligence Committee member
Chris Stewart told Fox News that he has seen the withheld emails, and said they "do reveal classified sources, and they do reveal human assets." Further, he said, Clinton "absolutely" saw and forwarded some of the communications.
"I can't imagine how anyone could be familiar with these emails . . . and not realize these are highly classified," he said.
One email refers to "OGA," which is short for "other government agency," which usually refers to the CIA, reports NBC, and there was another email that called a CIA officer a "State" official, suggesting the person sending the email knew the officer wasn't a diplomat.
Defense Department official Jeremy Bash, who at the time was chief of staff to then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, concerned Dario Lorenzetti, who was later revealed to be a CIA officer, who was killed in a 2012 suicide vest attack.
Lorenzetti's CIA affiliation was leaked to the press four days after he died, but his CIA cover was not lifted until later and some obituaries said he worked for the State Department.
Bash sent the email to George Little, a Pentagon spokesman who was a former CIA spokesman, and Philippe Reines, one of Clinton's aides. Reines in turn sent the email to Clinton aides Cheyrl Mills and Jake Sullivan, who sent it on to Clinton. There was no indication she commented.
Bash has said the email wasn't classified when it was sent and did not reveal Lorenzetti's name, employer or description.
Other emails referred to covert intelligence officers, and were against classification rules, the officials who saw them said, but it's not clear if they would have provided many insights to foreign agencies if Clinton's email server had been hacked.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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