President Obama undermined his defense of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server during an interview this past weekend when he told a reporter, "There’s classified, and then there’s classified," according to analysis by the New York Times.
The Times reported Monday that Obama’s comment reflected the argument critics of government secrecy have long touted: "what is classified is merely sensitive, a little embarrassing, or perhaps a policy debate still in progress."
But unlike the president’s rhetoric, the Times pointed out that the administration has been rigorous in pursuing cases dealing with potentially breached classified information—whether through news outlets, whistle-blowers, or government leaks.
The Times reported:
The White House has overseen some nine leak prosecutions, compared with just three under all previous presidents, drawing sharp criticism from news media advocates. The administration denounced the huge trove of confidential State Department cables released by WikiLeaks as damaging to American diplomacy, and it created task forces to counter Edward J. Snowden’s revelations about the National Security Agency – some of which involved genuine secrets, and some of which did not.
In 2009, the Obama administration prosecuted a midlevel State Department official after he told a Fox News reporter that U.S. sanctions on North Korea would trigger additional nuclear tests. The official, Stephen Kim, was sentenced to a 13-month prison term in February 2014 despite another State Department official noting in a court document that the information shared disclosed "nothing extraordinary."
The administration also prosecuted former CIA Director David Petraeus in November 2012 for sharing classified information with his mistress who was authoring his biography. The Times noted that many have concluded little of what Petraeus shared was "operationally important."
On Sunday, Obama shifted his administration’s traditional approach toward handling cases of potentially mishandled classified information.
Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace pointed out that thousands of emails on Clinton’s server contained classified information while government officials had marked a handful "top secret," the highest classification level.
Obama said Americans should "keep this in perspective," responding to Wallace, "There’s classified and then there’s classified."
Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy for the Federation of American Scientists, told the Times that Obama’s comment to Wallace "failed to grapple with the fact that a bunch of people in his administration have been caught up in a meat-grinder as a result of classification policy."
"If you’re on trial for unauthorized disclosure of classified information, you don’t get to say, ‘there’s classified, and then there’s classified,’" Aftergood said.
The administration just recently began restraining its use of "secret" or "top secret" classifications on cables transmitted from embassies to the State Department or the Pentagon after seven years of strict interpretation, according to the Times.