Hillary Clinton says she takes classification “seriously” and that her inability to remember whether certain meetings occurred doesn’t change her approach on the matter.
“I went into the State Department understanding classification. I [had] been on the Senate Armed Services Committee for years before I was secretary of state. I take classification seriously,” Mrs. Clinton told reporters aboard her campaign plane Monday.
The comments came just days after the FBI released notes of its interview with Mrs. Clinton that said she couldn’t give an example of how classification of a document was determined and that she relied on others at the State Department in that area.
She said some sensitive conversations were “part of the routine deliberation” that didn’t require special care, according to the FBI’s notes from the interview.
Mrs. Clinton also told the FBI she couldn’t remember if she was briefed on preserving records as she was preparing to leave the department. She fell and suffered a concussion in December 2012.
“The fact I couldn’t remember certain meetings, whether or not they had occurred, doesn’t in any way affect the commitment I had and still have to the treatment of classified material,” she told reporters Monday.
FBI investigators wrote in their notes that based on her doctor’s advice, Mrs. Clinton could only work at the State Department for a few hours a day and couldn’t recall every briefing she received.
Brian Fallon, Mrs. Clinton’s campaign spokesman, had said on Twitter that Mrs. Clinton said she couldn’t recall each briefing and she had missed part of that time due to her health.
In July, FBI Director James B. Comey declined to recommend criminal charges against Mrs. Clinton for mishandling classified information through the private email server she set up to use as secretary of state,
Mrs. Clinton’s evolving explanations over the set-up have dogged her presidential campaign. She initially said there was no classified material in her emails, which eventually changed to her saying she didn’t send or receive anything marked classified at the time.
She told FBI investigators she thought “(C)” classification markings on several documents signified an alphabetical ordering mark.
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
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