CBS This Morning reported Friday on an exclusive Associated Press piece revealing that one of the emails sent through Hillary Clinton's unsecured private email server discussed secret CIA drones.
"That drone program discussed in the emails was widely known, but because it was a CIA operation, intelligence officials say that those emails should have been considered classified," correspondent Nancy Cordes said. "It's part of an ongoing debate about just how sensitive the information in those emails was."
The two emails on Hillary Rodham Clinton's private server that an auditor deemed "top secret" include a discussion of a news article detailing a U.S. drone operation and a separate conversation that could point back to highly classified material in an improper manner or merely reflect information collected independently, U.S. officials who have reviewed the correspondence told The Associated Press.
The sourcing of the information in the emails could have significant political implications as the 2016 presidential campaign heats up. Clinton, the front-runner for the Democratic nomination, agreed this week to turn over to the FBI the private server she used as secretary of state, and Republicans in Congress have seized on the involvement of federal law enforcement as a sign that she was either negligent with the nation's secrets or worse.
On Monday, the inspector general for the 17 spy agencies that make up what is known as the intelligence community told Congress that two of 40 emails in a random sample of the 30,000 emails Clinton gave the State Department for review contained information deemed "Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information," one of the government's highest levels of classification.