Photo Credit: Courtesy Aaron Klein
Aaron Klein

Why Weren’t These Documents Deemed Classified?

Correspondence from Hillary Clinton’s personal e-mail account made public last Friday by the State Department raises questions about why sensitive information regarding the U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi was not designated officially as classified.

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One of the Clinton e-mails, first reported by The New York Times, concerns the whereabouts of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens while he was stationed in arguably one of the most dangerous zones in the world for any American diplomat.

About a year-and-a-half before the Sept. 11, 2012, terrorist attack in Benghazi, one e-mail forwarded to Clinton from her senior aide, Huma Abedin, detailed Stevens’s movements while Libya was descending into chaos and Al Qaeda-linked groups were gaining territory.

The e-mail contained what the State Department designated as “sensitive” information, or “SBU,” sensitive but unclassified. It is not immediately clear why Stevens’s movements in a war zone where anti-American extremists were helping wage an insurgency were not classified.

It’s just the latest example of sensitive information regarding the U.S. Benghazi special mission contained in government documents that was not officially classified. The mission itself reportedly contained sensitive documents and information that were not officially classified, either.

U.S. missions that house classified materials usually require the protection of a U.S. Marine contingent.

The U.S. Benghazi facility was protected by the Martyrs of the 17th Brigade militia, an offshoot of the Ansar al-Sharia terrorist organization that took responsibility for the Sept. 11, 2012, attack.

In her memoir Hard Choices, Clinton claims Marines were not posted to the Benghazi compound because the job of Marines is to protect classified documents, and the Benghazi facility did not process classified documents.

Yet questions have been raised as to why sensitive information housed there was not officially designated as classified. In July 2014, Fox News quoted sources in Washington and on the ground in Libya, including a witness, confirming that computers and documents with sensitive information were stolen during the Sept. 11, 2012, attack.

Three weeks after the attack, the Washington Post reported that documents inside the U.S. mission contained “delicate information about American operations in Libya.”

Another example of the strange classification of documents at the facility was contained within the federal indictment of Ahmed Abu Khatallah, suspected of helping to lead the attack.

The indictment accuses Khatallah of stealing “documents, maps and computers containing sensitive information” from the Benghazi mission.

It further states that before the assault, Khatallah conspired to “plunder property from the Mission and Annex, including documents, maps and computers containing sensitive information.” In other words, his desire to obtain sensitive documents inside the U.S. compound partially motivated the attack.

Contacted by KleinOnline, two former CIA agents said they were perplexed as to why such reported sensitive information housed inside the Benghazi mission was not designated as classified. The agents’ assessments were based on news media descriptions of the information, not on any firsthand knowledge.

Meanwhile, former CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell apparently has some explaining to do.

As has been widely reported, classified documents from the U.S. Department of Defense and the Department of State released by Judicial Watch show that within hours of the Sept. 11, 2012, Benghazi attack, the Obama administration had intelligence that it was planned by terrorists at least 10 days in advance with the aim “to kill as many Americans as possible.”

However, largely ignored is that in a new account published last week, Morell, who has been implicated in the Benghazi talking-points scandal, claimed the Benghazi attackers, whom he described as a mob, carried out the attack with “little or no advance planning.”

 

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Aaron Klein is the Jerusalem bureau chief for Breitbart News. Visit the website daily at www.breitbart.com/jerusalem. He is also host of an investigative radio program on New York's 970 AM Radio on Sundays from 7 to 9 p.m. Eastern. His website is KleinOnline.com.