Thus far, about 1,300 emails from Hillary Clinton's account have been deemed classified, most at the lowest level, "confidential." | AP Photo 22 Hillary Clinton emails declared 'top secret' by State Dept. A new batch of just over 900 messages released Friday contains 11 deemed 'secret'.

The furor over Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email account grew more serious for the Democratic presidential front-runner Friday as the State Department designated 22 of the messages from her account “top secret.”

It was the first time State has formally deemed any of Clinton’s emails classified at that level, reserved for information that can cause “exceptionally grave” damage to national security if disclosed.


State did not provide details on the subjects of the messages, which represent seven email chains and a total of 37 pages. State spokesman John Kirby said they are part of a set the intelligence community inspector general told Congress contained information that was classified because it dealt with Special Access Programs.

“These documents were not marked classified at the time they were sent,” Kirby said in a statement. He said State is still looking into whether they should have been considered classified at the time they were created.

“I’m not going to speak to the contents of the traffic,” the spokesman said.

The Clinton campaign blasted the decision to withhold the 22 messages as “top secret.”

“This is overclassification run amok. We adamantly oppose the complete blocking of the release of these emails,” campaign spokesman Brian Fallon said on Twitter. Appearing on MSNBC after the news broke, Fallon vowed to fight the decision.

“You have the intelligence community, including an intelligence community inspector general, as well as the inspector general at the State Department, that have been insisting on certain ways of deciding what is classified and what’s not,” he said. “We know that there has been disagreement on these points, and it has spilled out into public view at various points over the last several months. It now appears that some of the loudest voices in this interagency review that had some of the strongest straitjacket-type opinions on what should count as classified, have prevailed. That’s unfortunate. We strongly disagree with the finding that has been reached today, and we are going to be contesting it and seeking to have these emails released.”

“We will pursue all appropriate avenues to see that [Clinton’s] emails are released in a manner consistent with her call last year,” Fallon said in a statement released through the campaign.

Clinton’s main rival for the Democratic nomination, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), issued a two-sentence statement about the email developments.

“As I said at the first Democratic debate, there is a legal process in place which should proceed and not be politicized. The voters of Iowa and this nation deserve a serious discussion of the issues facing them,” Sanders said.

State was ordered by a federal judge to complete its public release of Clinton’s emails by Friday, but the department said recently that it will not be able to meet that deadline. Just over 900 emails totaling 1,670 pages were released on the department’s website on Friday evening, leaving more than 7,000 pages still in the review process.

The new releases and the “top secret” batch brought the number of emails in Clinton’s account deemed classified to more than 1,600. In the new release, 11 more emails were designated as “secret,” which is the middle tier of classification, while 231 were labeled at the lowest tier, “confidential.”

As with earlier Clinton email releases, the “confidential” or “secret” information was deleted from the messages released publicly on Friday. However, the messages deemed “top secret” will not be published even in part, Kirby said.

The latest batch of emails spans a wide array of subjects, including policy on North Korea and Haiti and Guantánamo. Some appear to have been delayed in the review process because they involved key players in other parts of the government, including White House chief of staff Denis McDonough, who was a National Security Council official at the time many of the emails were sent. Many are so heavily redacted the subject of the exchanges can’t be determined.

The messages deemed "secret" also vary widely. One from Feb. 25, 2012 appears to discuss U.S. drone operations in Pakistan.

“This is hitting the news, with Taliban or HQN [the Haqqani Network] claiming responsibility,” State policy planning chief Jake Sullivan wrote to Clinton. The message originated with the U.S. Ambassador in Pakistan, Dick Hoagland. Nearly all the text is deleted, but news reports that day described the crash of a drone in North Waziristan.

U.S. drones in Pakistan are operated by the Central Intelligence Agency, but the program is officially covert and therefore classified, even though President Barack Obama has acknowledged it publicly.

One "secret" missive from Sullivan to Clinton refers to then-NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen and was sent on Aug. 24, 2011, around the time of the fall of Libyan leader Moammar Qadhafi's government in Tripoli. All details in the message are redacted, but the notations added to it suggest it contains information on intelligence sources or methods.

Another “secret” message involved former Mideast negotiator Dennis Ross and came at a time of U.S.-Israel tension amidst widespread reports that Israel might act militarily against Iran's nuclear program. The Sept. 23, 2012 exchange is heavily redacted, but includes Clinton writing to Ross: “Does EB know what you are doing [with] I’m?” The first initials could refer to then-Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak.

The State Department also announced Friday that 18 emails between Clinton and Obama are being withheld from disclosure.

“Such presidential records shall remain confidential to protect the president’s ability to receive unvarnished advice and counsel,” Kirby said.

Experts say the withholding of such Obama-Clinton messages is likely to involve invoking the “presidential communications privilege,” which is a form of executive privilege.

However, Kirby insisted that executive privilege is not being asserted and said the messages will eventually be public.

“Nobody’s invoking executive privilege on this,” the spokesman said. “They ultimately will be released in accordance with the Presidential Records Act.”

Under that law, records don’t usually become public until five years after a president leaves office. Sensitive advice can be withheld for 12 years.

The White House had sought to keep distance from the Clinton email issue from the very beginning, wary of both the legal and political issues involved. But it’s been clear since late October, when the White House first acknowledged publicly that it had asked the State Department to withhold emails between the president and then-secretary of state, that this would no longer be possible.

Now, with much about the messages shrouded in the legal process, the White House will once again be in the uncomfortable position of trying to explain a situation aides didn’t initially know about themselves and never approved of once they did. Obama aides are also unhappy that they like look they’re stonewalling when they say they can’t discuss it.

Kirby declined to respond directly to the Clinton campaign critique but confirmed State made the “top secret” designations at the request of the intelligence community.

“We worked closely with the intelligence community on this, as we have through this process,” Kirby said. “At their request, we have decided to make this upgrade. It’s a State Department decision we are doing, but we’re doing it at the request of the intelligence community.”

Kirby declined to say whether State agrees with the intelligence community’s view that the messages were “top secret” at the time they were sent and were therefore sent in violation of department policies.

“The State Department’s going to take a look here at that,” he said. “I’m not going to prejudge the outcomes of any of this.”

One of the emails deemed “top secret” Friday was one of two the intelligence community inspector general identified as such over the summer in a letter sent to Congress, Kirby said. “The other one was returned to the State Department as not possessing any intelligence community equities,” Kirby said.

However, that message was not released Friday. Another State Department official said later Friday that while one message flagged as classified by the intelligence community was released last year, the second of the two messages deemed “top secret” is still “moving through the interagency review process.”

Another source told Politico that the email was flagged by the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency and was thought to contain sensitive intelligence about North Korea. A spokesman for that agency did not respond to requests for comment Friday.

Last July, the FBI opened an investigation into how classified information ended up on Clinton’s server. That probe is thought to be ongoing. FBI officials have declined to discuss it, although FBI Director James Comey has said it would be conducted without regard to political implications.

Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, GOP Benghazi investigators took a small victory lap, reminding the public in a statement that it was their panel that originally discovered Clinton’s rare email arrangement after demanding her emails for its investigation. State, upon realizing it had no Clinton emails to give the committee, was forced to ask her for copies, thus disclosing the homemade setup.

“It is the FBI, not the Benghazi Committee, that is investigating the mishandling of classified information in connection with Secretary Clinton’s use of an unsecure, private server to conduct official U.S. government foreign policy,” wrote Benghazi Committee communications director Jamal Ware: “Of course, none of the Secretary of State’s emails would have been discovered if not for the work of the Select Committee on Benghazi.”

Defense hawk Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), an Iraq War veteran, even released a statement calling for criminal prosecution of Clinton, saying her use of a personal email “wasn’t just negligent, it was completely dangerous.”

“Did our enemies hack these emails? And were lives put at risk as a result? To put our country in danger for personal convenience is arrogant and irresponsible — and it’s illegal,” he said. “She should face the same consequences that any federal employee who behaved similarly would face, including criminal prosecution.”

However, Democrats struck a more sympathetic tone and held out the possibility that Clinton and her aides didn’t realize the sensitivity of some of the information.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Clinton didn’t “originate” any of the email chains deemed to be “top secret.”

“The 22 emails the State Department has labeled classified are part of seven separate back-and-forth email chains, and none of those email chains originated with Secretary Clinton,” Feinstein said. “It has never made sense to me that Secretary Clinton can be held responsible for email exchanges that originated with someone else. And second, none of the emails sent to Secretary Clinton have the mandatory markings that are required when classified information is transmitted.”

Critics have said Clinton was negligent to use a private server for her email because sensitive information was virtually certain to end up on there, given the nature of her duties. But Feinstein rejected that line of attack.

“The only reason to hold Secretary Clinton responsible for emails that didn’t originate with her is for political points, and that’s what we’ve seen over the past several months,” the California Democrat said.

Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said: “Having reviewed many of these emails, I can attest that classification determinations are often very complex, as demonstrated by the fact it has taken an interagency working group more than six months to make a decision on whether emails sent or received by Secretary Clinton should now be classified, even if they were not at the time. A later determination will evidently be made as to whether any of their contents should have been marked classified when they were sent or received. It’s important to remember that none of these emails had any classification markings at the time they were sent, and Secretary Clinton and her staff were responding to world events in real time without the benefit of months of analysis after the fact.”

Edward-Isaac Dovere contributed to this report.