When FBI Director James Comey announced Tuesday that investigators were not recommending any charges in the Clinton email matter, he noted that "a very small number of the e-mails containing classified information bore markings indicating the presence of classified information."
The claim appeared to contradict Democratic presidential candidate Clinton's repeated claims that nothing in her emails was marked classified at the time she received it, although the State Department has also said on numerous occasions that none of the information in those messages was marked classified.
At a regular briefing for reporters Wednesday, Kirby said State is aware of two instances in the set of roughly 30,000 messages turned over to the agency by Clinton where classification markings appeared in the emails. However, he said those were mistakes where staff failed to remove the notations while preparing background and talking points for Clinton in a planned phone call with a foreign official.
"It appears that those...that those markings were a human error. They didn’t need to be there. Because once the secretary had decided to make the call, the process is then to move the call sheet, to change its markings to unclassified and deliver it to the secretary in a form that he or she can use," Kirby said. "And best we can tell on these occasions, the markings — the confidential markings — was simply human error. Because the decision had already been made, they didn’t need to be made on the email."
Kirby said such "call sheets" are often treated as classified when being prepared but as unclassified when forwarded to the secretary for his or her use.
The State spokesman said he was aware of two instances where "Confidential"-level classification markings appeared in the set of emails State processed for public release under the Freedom of Information Act. He appeared to refer to
a Fox News report last month that highlighted an email proposing a call from Clinton to Malawi Presidential Joyce Banda after she took power following the death of President Bingu wu Mutharika in April 2012.
"(C) Purpose of Call: to offer condolences on the passing of President Mutharika and congratulate President Banda on her recent swearing in," the message said. The "(C)" at the beginning of the paragraph signals its content is classified "Confidential," although the message appears to have been cut and pasted because it is missing the full set of markings required for a classified message.
State: Some classified markings in Clinton emails were 'human error'
