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A Dozen Sensitive Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell Emails Found

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Ethan Barton Editor in Chief
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A government watchdog discovered 12 additional classified Department of State documents sent through personal email addresses belonging to former Secretary of State Colin Powell and the immediate staff of former Secretary Condoleezza Rice.

The emails were discovered during the State Department inspector general’s examination of records preserved under the last five secretaries of state, according to a report released Friday.

“On December 29, 2015, the department advised OIG that 12 of the 19 documents contain national security information classified at the secret or confidential levels based on a review by nine department bureaus and offices,” the report said.

Originally, “none of the material was marked as classified, but the substance of the material and ‘NODIS’ (No Distribution) references in the body or subject lines of some of the documents suggested that the documents could be potentially sensitive.”

The documents were sent between February 2003 and June 2008.

“Two of these documents were emails sent to Secretary Powell’s personal email account,” the report continued. “The remaining were documents transmitted to personal or unclassified accounts belonging to a member of Secretary Rice’s immediate staff and another senior department official.”

The 12 documents sent under the former President George W. Bush administration’s State Department are minuscule when compared to classified material on the personal server belonging to former Secretary of State and current Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton. Of her more than 30,000 emails released, 22 are classified as top secret, 65 as secret and 2,028 as confidential, the New York Times reported Wednesday.

It’s possible the State Department or the IG could find more classified documents sent through personal email accounts.

“Additional potential classified material and/or highly sensitive information not intended for distribution may reside in the department’s unclassified paper and electronic archives associated with Secretaries Powell and Rice and their respective staff,” the report said.

The Department of State moved all classified emails identified by the IG into secure storage.

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