Saturday, August 22, 2015

GOP Head of Benghazi Probe Complained About ‘Overclassification’ of Documents

Trey Gowdy, the chairman of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, wrote to the State Department in July alleging that certain Benghazi-related documents provided to the committee are "unnecessarily" and "improperly" marked as classified.

Gowdy's letter, obtained by National Journal, was sent just weeks before the controversy over Hillary Clinton's emails intensified with fresh questions about the extent and sensitivity of classified information in her private email system. Gowdy, along with many other Republicans, has said the presence of classified information in the private email system Clinton used as secretary of State may have jeopardized national security.

But some experts believe that overclassification by the intelligence community—that is, needless classification of documents that would not harm security if made public—may be occurring with messages in Clinton's system.

Gowdy also believes some documents are unnecessarily labeled as classified. In this case, Gowdy was concerned with documents connected with the outside panel largely selected by the State Department that reviewed the 2012 Benghazi attack.

"There appear to be substantial issues with respect to the April production of documents related to the Benghazi Accountability Review Board," Gowdy wrote to Secretary of State John Kerry on July 8.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/congress/gop-head-of-benghazi-probe-complained-about-over-classification-of-documents-20150821

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