This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
FBI Director James Comey claims Hillary Clinton sent and received classified information through her private email system while serving as secretary of state. Clinton strongly disagrees, but the media supports Comey's assertion and calls Clinton dishonest.
Comey and the media have it wrong and should retract their statements. None of Clinton's emails contained classification banners, authorities or levels. The only reason Comey believes some contained classified material is because FBI investigators sent them to other federal agencies for review. When these agencies determined 110 of 30,000 emails were classified at the time she sent or received them, Comey slammed Clinton as "extremely careless in … handling … sensitive, highly classified information."
His conclusion was not only mean-spirited but also mistaken. Federal agencies have no authority to override each other's decisions about sensitive information. Director of the National Security Archives, Thomas Blanton, states that government agencies "regularly disagree" about classification, and outside agencies cannot "automatically trump the State Department's own decisions." Co-director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, Elizabeth Goitein, concurs: "Given the subjectivity of the analysis, agencies frequently come to different conclusions about the sensitivity of the same piece of information."
Sonja L. Farnsworth
Salt Lake City