Washington, January 30 (RHC)-- A U.S. government official has said that some of Hillary Clinton’s emails cannot be released since they are “too damaging” to national security.
The official close to the ongoing review of the former secretary of state’s e-mails told Fox News that the e-mails should not be released under any circumstances. Also, another source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, has backed up the finding, which shows the e-mails include intelligence from "special access programs," or SAP, that is deemed to be beyond “Top Secret.”
Under the Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, there is an exemption that makes it possible for highly sensitive and classified material to be kept secret and withheld in full, meaning that even heavily redacted versions cannot be released.
“We continue to process the next set of former Secretary Clinton’s e-mails for release under the FOIA process and will have more to say about it later,” a State Department official told Fox News.
The decision to withhold the documents in full undermines claims made by the U.S. State Department and the Clinton campaign that all of the intelligence in the e-mails was unclassified when it hit Clinton's personal server.
Clinton’s decision to use a private server potentially put thousands of pages of State Department e-mails at risk, but it also shielded her correspondence from congressional and Freedom of Information Act requests.
A letter by intelligence community Inspector General Charles McCullough III, dated January 14, informed senior intelligence and foreign relations committee leaders of the fact that "several dozen emails containing classified information” were proven to be “at the CONFIDENTIAL, SECRET, AND TOP SECRET/SAP levels."
The State Department has recently released another batch of 5,500 pages of Clinton's personal e-mail messages from her time as secretary of state, raising the total pages released so far to over 40,000.
The State Department has been releasing Clinton's e-mails monthly since June to comply with a judge’s order that they be made public by the end of January 2016.
