At least four emails Hillary Clinton kept on a private server during her years as Secretary of State were classified “secret” at the time, according to an inspector general review — a finding that calls into question her assertion in March that she took care to avoid sending classified materials. 
 
 However, suggestions from Clinton aides that she didn’t knowingly keep classified information on the private account still have some life. So far, it appears none of the information was marked as classified before it moved into or out of her home-cooked email system, but that caveat has not stemmed Republican complaints that it was reckless for her to handle her sensitive work on a private system. 
 
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 “None of the emails we reviewed had classification or dissemination markings, but some included [Intelligence Community]-derived classified information and should have been handled and transmitted via a secure network,” Intelligence Community Inspector General I. Charles McCullough III said in a letter to congressional committee leaders Thursday. 
 
 McCullough said a limited sample of just 40 emails “revealed four contained classified IC information that should have been marked and handled at the SECRET level” — the middle of three broad tiers of classification. The claim became public as McCullough disclosed to Congress that he had advised the FBI of a potential “compromise” of classified information in the Clinton email episode —a referral that could lead to a criminal investigation. 
 
 It’s a violation of federal law for a government official to “knowingly” move “materials containing classified information” to “an unauthorized location.” 
 
 Soon after it was revealed in March that Clinton used a private server to handle her work-related email as secretary, she insisted at a press conference that there was no need for concern about classified information. 
 
 “I did not email any classified material to anyone on my email,” she said. “There is no classified material. So, I’m certainly well aware of the classification requirements and did not send classified material.” 
 
 McCullough’s letter does not allege specifically that Clinton sent classified information from her private account. While it is possible she only received it, the inspector general said the State Department believes “there are potentially hundreds of classified emails within the approximately 30,000 provided by former Secretary Clinton.” 
 
 Clinton addressed the new reports briefly Friday, but she did not reiterate her claim that nothing on her server was classified. 
 
 “I want to say a word about what’s in the news today. It’s because there have been a lot of inaccuracies….Maybe the heat is getting to everybody,” the Democratic presidential candidate said as she began a speech on economic policy in New York City. “We all have a responsibility to get this right. I have released 55,000 pages of emails. I have said repeatedly that i will answer questions before the house [Benghazi] committee. We are all accountable to get the facts right. I will do my part, but I’m also going to stay focused on the issues, particularly the big issues that really matter to American families.” 
 
 Clinton handed over a trove of business-related emails to the department in December, generating controversy after she said she and her attorney had destroyed any emails that they deemed personal in nature. 
 
 A lengthy review ensued to screen for classified material before public release. In May, when the agency released the first batch of Clinton emails, it said it had designated a portion of one email as secret at the request of the FBI. When a second, larger batch was released last month, State deemed 25 of the emails “confidential” — the lowest tier of classification. 
 
 However, McCullough’s finding is notable because he is asserting that at least some of the information was classified at the time it was sent, although he did not say whether Clinton sent or only received such emails. All of the emails released thus far are at least a couple of years old and State officials had insisted that some of the materials could have become more sensitive over time, resulting in a change to their classification. 
 
 McCullough spokeswoman Andrea Williams said Friday that was, in fact, not the case. “To be clear – the four emails mentioned…were classified when they were sent and are classified now,” she said. 
 
 However, State Department spokesman Mark Toner said Friday his agency remained unconvinced that any of Clinton’s emails should have been considered classified when they were sent. “To our knowledge, none of them needed to be classified at the time,” Toner told reporters at a daily briefing. 
 
 Still, the question of what information on Clinton’s account is and isn’t classified and what its status was at the time, remains a subject of some dispute. 
 
 McCullough said in the letter that he found that one of State’s public releases of emails in recent months under the Freedom of Information Act resulted in disclosure of classified information. While the inspector general said the intelligence community had made “a definitive determination” that the information was classified, State has continued to deny that any breaches occurred when the agency posted several thousand pages of Clinton emails on its website in May and June. 
 
 Other documents made public Friday show the classification issue triggered debate even within the agency. Some at State wanted to deem even more of Clinton’s emails classified than the agency ultimately did, according to a memo from McCullough’s office posted online by the department’s inspector general. 
 
 In at least four instances, lawyers at Foggy Bottom headed off the classifications by proposing another way to keep the information from the public, the document said. 
 
 For Clinton, the previously-undisclosed changes minimized the public relations hit she took with the May email release. Instead of stories saying five emails in that Libya-related set were classified, news accounts noted that a single email out of the 296 released was withheld on national security grounds. 
 
 Clinton’s decision to use a private server for all of her government and personal emails has been a continuing political controversy for her, seized on by Republicans as evidence that she violated government guidelines. 
 
 However, the new disclosures also underscore the subjective nature of the classification system and could be seen as supporting Clinton’s claim that she had no reason to believe any of the information on her personal account was classified. 
 
 “State Department FOIA personnel recommended five B1 (Classified National Security Information) FOIA exemptions for proposed redactions in the first set of 296 emails to protect classified information. According to State FOIA personnel, during the State Department Legal Office’s review, four of the Bl exemptions were removed and changed to B5 FOIA exemptions (Privileged Communications),” a June 15 memo from the Intelligence Community inspector general said. 
 
 The decision to deem the records legally privileged as internal government communications, rather than classified, allowed the information to be deleted from the FOIA records posted on State’s website. However, the move also minimized the degree to which Clinton appeared to have mishandled the records. In addition, the shift minimized the appearance that the State Department itself did something wrong when it sent the 296 emails to the House Benghazi Committee without designating any of them as classified. 
 
 Whatever public relations benefit Clinton or State got from the maneuver was short-lived: when State released another batch of Clinton emails at the end of June, 25 more were deemed classified. 
 
 With a criminal investigation into the presence of classified information in the Clinton emails now potentially looming, the internal waffling at State on the classification issue does offer another benefit for Clinton and those who corresponded with her. It underscores why prosecutors so rarely bring charges over mishandling of classified information—especially when it is not explicitly marked as such. 
 
 Deeming emails classified years after they were sent creates due process problems that could doom any such prosecution. However, to Republican lawmakers and some voters, the episode could still reinforce the view that Clinton showed poor judgment by relying on a private email account.. 
 
 Since State first deemed some of the information classified two months ago, her aides have said she had no reason to think the information was classified at the time she received it. Indeed, some—but not all—of the emails State deemed classified were explicitly marked as “sensitive but unclassified.” 
 
 After the New York Times reported the criminal referral from the inspectors generals, Clinton campaign spokesman Nick Merrill issued a statement early Friday that Clinton “followed appropriate practices in dealing with classified materials.” 
 
 “As has been reported on multiple occasions, any released emails deemed classified by the administration have been done so after the fact, and not at the time they were transmitted,” Merrill added. 
 
 Asked Friday about the reason State backed off some of the proposed classifications, a State spokesman pointed to a July 14 memo from Undersecretary for Management Patrick Kennedy. In it, he said that two of the four emails were in relevant part duplicates and that the potential classification was proposed by State’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs. 
 
 “NEA consulted with the Office of the Legal Adviser regarding FOIA exemptions that were potentially available,” Kennedy wrote. “NEA decided, consistent with the Attorney General’s 2009 FOIA guidance, to redact certain limited information under exemption 5 which reflected deliberations among policy officials.” 
 
 Kennedy also disclosed that one email relating to the Department of Defense was proposed for classification, but the Pentagon decided not to pursue it. As a result the only email in the first, Libya-related batch to be deemed classified dealt with the reported arrests of suspects in the Benghazi attack, classified at the FBI’s request. 
 
 One prominent classification expert said the back-and-forth underscores the arbitrariness and subjectivity of the classification system. 
 
 “Classification decisions are matters of judgment, not calculation,” said Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists. “It is entirely possible for two senior officials to disagree about the need for classifying a particular item of information.” ||||| Steven Aftergood, who directs the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, said he suspected that if there had been no fuss and a researcher or journalist had sought all of Mrs. Clinton’s emails under the Freedom of Information Act, the answer might have been different. 
 
 “It would have been a real surprise if none of it was withheld on the grounds of classification,” Mr. Aftergood said. To start with, he said, “they’d have to say there’s no ‘foreign government information’ in the chief diplomat’s email.” 
 
 But Mr. Aftergood also noted that as secretary of state, Mrs. Clinton was the top classification authority for the entire State Department, with broad discretion to determine which department documents were classified and which were not. “There’s zero chance that she’ll be charged with unauthorized retention of classified information, because she decides what’s classified,” he said. 
 
 Clinton aides pointed out other factors that reduced the need to use the personal email account for sensitive matters. As secretary of state, Mrs. Clinton was almost always accompanied by one or more aides with secure government BlackBerrys, laptops or other devices that could be used to send classified material at her direction. 
 
 “Classified information was viewed in hard copy by the secretary while in the office,” according to a statement from her office Tuesday. “While on travel, the department had rigorous protocols for her and traveling staff to receive and transmit information of all types.” 
 
 Her office said that while serving as secretary, Ms. Clinton “communicated with foreign officials in person, through correspondence and by telephone.” Her staff’s review of her emails “revealed only one email with a foreign official,” one from the United Kingdom, the statement said. 
 
 It is rare but not unheard-of for a government official to be punished for storing classified information on a personal device. John M. Deutch, a former C.I.A. director, was pardoned by President Bill Clinton in 2001, sparing him a guilty plea to a misdemeanor charge for keeping classified information on personal, nongovernment computers. Mr. Deutch had already been stripped of his security clearance.
– Hillary Clinton may say she never sent any classified information using her personal email account, but experts and former government officials aren't so sure. As the New York Times reports, both Democrats and Republicans believe the government tends to err on the side of "overclassification" when it comes to making documents secret—more than 80 million documents were classified in 2013—making it difficult to believe that Clinton somehow managed to avoid sending information considered sensitive. "As a longtime critic of the government's massive overclassification, I thought it was a refreshing touch that the secretary of state conducted all her email in unclassified form," says the director of George Washington University's National Security Archive with what the Times calls "a hint of sarcasm." Clinton's staff has identified more than 30,000 emails as pertaining to government business, and a former senior State Department official says it's "hard to imagine" none of those were classified. By his estimate, he says, “I would assume that more than 50% of what the secretary of state dealt with was classified." And another expert notes that, had a journalist made a FOIA request for all of Clinton's email before news of her personal account broke, "it would have been a real surprise if none of it was withheld on the grounds of classification." But, he adds, "there's zero chance that she'll be charged with unauthorized retention of classified information, because she decides what's classified." Clinton also traveled with aides who could have sent classified material from their accounts on her behalf. Politico reports that about 900 pages of emails relating to Benghazi will be released soon.