An intelligence community review has determined that two classified emails were, in fact, "top secret" when they appeared in Hillary Clinton’s email inbox and on her personal server, according to a Fox News exclusive report, published on Tuesday. The controversy has centered on the designation of two emails - one about North Korean missiles and the other about a drone strike - and whether or not they were considered "top secret" at the time they were sent, regardless of their subsequent designation.
Intelligence Community Inspector General I. Charles McCullough III made the claim that two of the emails contained top-secret information, while the State Department publicly stated its disagreement and asked Director of National Intelligence James Clapper’s office to referee the dispute, The New York Times reported.
The Fox News report, which relies on anonymous sources, said the dispute over whether or not the two emails were classified at the highest level has now been determined a "settled matter."
Those sources said both emails were "top secret" at the time, as designated by the CIA and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, and that one of the two remains at that level today, while the other one has been downgraded because of some information that has become publicly available.
Last month, Politico reported that the U.S. intelligence community was retreating from claims that two emails in Clinton's private email account contained top secret information. "The initial determination was based on a flawed process," an unnamed source told Politico at the time. "There was an intelligence product people thought [one of the emails] was based on, but that actually postdated the email in question."
If true, the intelligence community's decision seems to have been reversed if the Fox News report is correct. However, State Department spokesman John Kirby said in a Nov. 6 press briefing that he was unaware of any resolution of the classification of the emails.
"[W]e’ve received no final decisions by the intelligence community with respect to these two emails," Kirby said at the time. "What hasn’t changed is our view - and I’ve said this before - that we don’t believe that they should be classified at that level, and that - and we’ve, again, made our case pretty strongly about both of them. But as far as we know here at the State Department, there’s been no final decision made by the intel community on that."
