Given all this, it’s no surprise that many experts say that overclassification has become a big problem across the government. Even FBI Director Comey admitted as much in a Senate hearing, agreeing that a great deal of material that gets classified is, in fact, widely known to the public and poses little or no risk to national security.
Comey also confirmed that none of my emails was properly marked as classified, and therefore I would reasonably conclude they were not. His full exchange with Congressman Matt Cartwright of Pennsylvania in a congressional hearing on July 7, 2016, is worth reading:
CARTWRIGHT: You were asked about markings on a few documents—I have the manual here—marking national classified security information. And I don’t think you were given a full chance to talk about those three documents with the little c’s on them. Were they properly documented? Were they properly marked according to the manual?
COMEY: No.
CARTWRIGHT: According to the manual, if you’re going to classify something, there has to be a header on the document? Right?
COMEY: Correct.
CARTWRIGHT: Was there a header on the three documents that we’ve discussed today that had the little c in the text someplace?
COMEY: No. There were three emails. The c was in the body, in the text, but there was no header on the email or in the text.
CARTWRIGHT: So if Secretary Clinton really were an expert about what’s classified and what’s not classified, and we’re following the manual, the absence of a header would tell her immediately that those three documents were not classified. Am I correct in that?
COMEY: That would be a reasonable inference.
This is not a situation in which America’s national security was endangered.
This wasn’t just the view of the Commander in Chief. Many top foreign policy officials from both parties agreed, and endorsed me for President—like Michael Chertoff, George W. Bush’s Secretary of Homeland Security. “She’s going to do a good job protecting the country,” Chertoff told NPR. “In a world at war, you’ve got to focus on the top priority which is protecting the United States and protecting our friends and allies.”
The American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails! Enough of the emails. Let’s talk about the real issues facing America.
I couldn’t have said it better myself. I remain grateful for Bernie’s wise comment in our first debate. There was a reason the crowd cheered so heartily. He was right that the whole controversy was nonsense. If only the press had treated it that way. I wish I could end this story right here. Unfortunately, the saga continued.
Our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.
The FBI’s security inquiry was thorough, professional—and slow. My lawyer wrote to the Department of Justice way back in August 2015, repeating my public pledge to cooperate completely and offering for me to appear voluntarily to answer questions. I wanted my interview to take place as quickly as possible, since the first Democratic primaries were looming. But we were repeatedly told, “Not yet.”
It became clear that I would likely be the last witness interviewed. I understood this was the logical sequence, but I chafed at being unable to dispel the cloud of uncertainty looming over me.
Finally, in June 2016, they were ready to talk to me. We agreed to an interview on July 2, a sleepy Saturday on a hot holiday weekend. To avoid press hoopla as much as possible, we set it for 8:00 A.M. at the FBI Headquarters in the J. Edgar Hoover Building in downtown Washington.
An elevator whisked me and my team up from the basement parking lot to the eighth floor, where we were brought to a secure conference room. Eight DOJ and FBI lawyers and agents were waiting for us. One of my attorneys, Katherine Turner, was eight and a half months pregnant, so there was a lot of baby-related small talk to help break the ice.
The interview lasted three and a half hours and was conducted largely by two FBI agents, although all the government lawyers asked some questions. They wanted to know how I had decided to use my personal email at the State Department, who I’d talked to, what I’d been told, what I knew about maintenance of the system, how I’d had the emails sorted, and other things. The agents were professional, precise, and courteous. Their questions were phrased carefully and not argumentative, and when they obtained an answer, they didn’t try to badger. I thought it was conducted efficiently. When they said they had no further questions and thanked me, I apologized to them all, saying that I was sorry they’d had to spend so much time on this matter.
Director Comey had not been present during my Saturday interview. But three days later, on Tuesday, July 5, he held a very unusual press conference. It came as a complete surprise to us. We had no warning and had heard no feedback at all after the Saturday session.
Comey made a double-barreled announcement. First, he said that no criminal charges would be brought against anyone, stating that “no reasonable prosecutor” would bring a criminal case of mishandling classified information in this situation. We had expected that. Nonetheless, it was good to hear those words.
The second shot was both completely unexpected and inappropriate. Comey said that although my State Department colleagues and I had not violated the law about handling classified information, we—all three hundred of us who had written emails later classified—were nevertheless “extremely careless.” He said the FBI had found that “the security culture of the State Department in general, and with respect to use of unclassified email systems in particular, was generally lacking in the kind of care for classified information found elsewhere in the government.” It was one thing to go after me, but disparaging the entire State Department was totally out-of-bounds and revealed how much age-old institutional rivalries between agencies colored this entire process.
Much of the public and press reaction to Comey’s announcement rightly focused on the overall conclusion that after months of controversy, there was no case. Critics predicting my imminent indictment were bitterly disappointed. But I was angry and frustrated that Comey had used his public position to criticize me, my staff, and the State Department, with no opportunity for us to counter or disprove the charge.
I felt a little like Ray Donovan, President Reagan’s Secretary of Labor, who, after being acquitted of fraud charges, asked, “Which office do I go to to get my reputation back?”
My first instinct was that my campaign should hit back hard and explain to the public that Comey had badly overstepped his bounds—the same argument Rod Rosenstein would make months after the election. That might have blunted the political damage and made Comey think twice before breaking protocol again a few months later. My team raised concerns with that kind of confrontational approach. In the end, we decided it would be better to just let it go and try to move on. Looking back, that was a mistake.
The Director laid out his version of the facts for the news media as if it were a closing argument, but without a trial. It is a textbook example of what federal prosecutors and agents are taught not to do.