(d) Information that has not previously been disclosed to the public under proper authority may be classified or reclassified after an agency has received a request for it under the Freedom of Information Act (5 U.S.C. But she admitted in retrospect "it would have been better" to use multiple emails. (c) The Director of National Intelligence (or, if delegated by the Director of National Intelligence, the Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence) may, with respect to the Intelligence Community, after consultation with the head of the originating Intelligence Community element or department, declassify, downgrade, or direct the declassification or downgrading of information or intelligence relating to intelligence sources, methods, or activities.
– Since July, Hillary Clinton's team has been fighting findings by the intelligence community's inspector general that she housed classified information on her private email server. But a special intelligence review by the CIA and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency just bolstered the original proclamation, finding that two emails she received in 2009 and 2011 via that server were considered "Top Secret," including an email about North Korea's nukes, the New York Times reports, citing senior intelligence officials speaking anonymously. Clinton's campaign is doubling down, however, with a rep accusing the discovery process of being tainted by "bureaucratic infighting" and a State Department spokesman proclaiming that "classification is rarely a black and white question. … At this time, any conclusion about the classification of the documents in question would be premature." The "Top Secret" designation, signed off on by President Obama in a 2009 executive order, is bestowed on info that, if revealed, "could be expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to … national security." But Clinton herself backed up her rep's assessment, telling the AP yesterday in Iowa that "there is always a debate among different agencies about [whether] something should be retroactively [marked classified]." When asked why she isn't offering up any direct apologies, she added, "What I did was allowed. It was allowed by the State Department. The State Department has confirmed that. I did not send or receive any information marked classified. I take the responsibilities of handling classified materials very seriously and did so." (Clinton did recently apologize for this matter being "confusing to people.")