Hillary Clinton's 'top secret' emails reportedly discussed a news article about drones

U.S. conducted first airstrike on ISIS from Turkish base on Tuesday
(Image credit: Dominique Faget/AFP/Getty Images)

On Monday, Charles McCullough, the inspector general of the U.S. intelligence community, told Congress that two of Hillary Clinton's emails from her time as secretary of state had been judged to be "Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information," one of the top classification levels. One of those two emails may obliquely refer to highly classified material, several U.S. officials tell The Associated Press, or it may contain information gleaned from other, unclassified sources.

The other email, though, seems to have been classified "Top Secret/SCI" because it discussed a news article about the U.S. drone program in Pakistan, widely reported on but officially considered a secret. The article was sent from the CIA, but "a Clinton adviser follows up by dancing around a top secret in a way that could possibly be inferred as confirmation," AP says, noting that several other officials "described this claim as tenuous." You can read more about the "secrets" at AP.

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Peter Weber

Peter Weber is a senior editor at TheWeek.com, and has handled the editorial night shift since the website launched in 2008. A graduate of Northwestern University, Peter has worked at Facts on File and The New York Times Magazine. He speaks Spanish and Italian and plays bass and rhythm cello in an Austin rock band. Follow him on Twitter.