Multiple emails held on Hillary Clinton’s personal, unsecured server indirectly referenced undercover CIA officers, according to a report Thursday citing U.S. officials who have viewed the messages.
NBC News reported that the emails in question were forwarded to Clinton when she was serving as secretary of state. The officials said that the messages, in which officials from the State Department and other agencies made indirect references to undercover officers, have since been classified in State’s review of Clinton’s emails.
One email referenced an undercover officer who was killed in a suicide attack in Afghanistan in 2012. The email, now classified as secret, was sent the day after the agent was killed in the attack. The message was released by the State Department in the latest batch of emails from Clinton’s private server Friday.
Three of the officials who spoke to NBC disputed reports that one message on Clinton’s server revealed the identity of an undercover officer directly.
Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon described the revelations as misleading and said that no intelligence officer was identified in the emails contained on Clinton’s server.
"This shows yet again how the leaking of selective details gives a completely false impression about what is actually contained in the emails forwarded to Hillary Clinton," Fallon told NBC. "Whenever the full contents of these emails are learned, there is invariably less than meets the eye."
The Clinton campaign has repeatedly characterized leaks about her emails as part of a partisan attempt to damage her presidential campaign. Last month, Fallon accused the intelligence community inspector general, a nominee of President Obama, of working with Republicans to hurt Clinton when he revealed that a review had turned up several dozen classified emails on Clinton’s server.
Last week, the Obama administration confirmed that 22 emails on Clinton’s private system contain top secret information, and the emails were withheld from release. The State Department said that it was reviewing whether the messages contained information that was classified when they originated on Clinton’s server.
Fallon described the matter as "overclassification run amok" on Friday and opposed the agency’s decision to block the release of the messages. Clinton has insisted that she never sent nor received information marked classified on her personal email.
The FBI is currently investigating Clinton’s email setup.