http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/report-state-officials-hiding-extent-of-classified-info-on-clinton-servers/article/2570310State Department officials tasked with screening Hillary Clinton's emails for release under the Freedom of Information Act are using exemptions in the transparency law to mask the extent of classified information they encounter.
Intelligence community officials who were brought into the FOIA review process amid concerns over potentially classified material have alerted their inspector general that State FOIA officers are altering classification decisions, according to a report by the Washington Times.
After intelligence officials have flagged parts of emails as classified, State Department employees have instead redacted those same passages under one of nine exemptions permitted under FOIA.
For example, an email set aside as classified by an intelligence expert may be exempted under a "deliberative process" provision that protects agency decision-making.
That means an individual reading the published emails in their final form would have no idea which emails were actually classified and which were simply redacted according to normal FOIA standards.
Intelligence officials told the inspector general they "feared the changes from 'classified' to other exemptions were deliberate and might hide from the public the true extent of classified secrets that flowed through Mrs. Clinton's personal email account," sources told the Times.
But State Department officials denied the exemptions had been used to mask classified information, noting the dozens of emails that have been marked classified since the agency began releasing documents in May.
A State Department spokesman did not immediately return a request for comment.
