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State Department spokesman John Kirby said some of Hillary Clinton's emails were erroneously marked classified. | AP Photo State: Some classified markings in Clinton emails were 'human error'

Some classification markings found in email messages on Hillary Clinton's private server were the result of "human error" and the related information was not considered classified at the time it was sent to her, State Department spokesman John Kirby said Wednesday.

When FBI Director James Comey announced Tuesday that investigators were not recommending any charges in the Clinton email matter, he noted that "a very small number of the e-mails containing classified information bore markings indicating the presence of classified information."

The claim appeared to contradict Democratic presidential candidate Clinton's repeated claims that nothing in her emails was marked classified at the time she received it, although the State Department has also said on numerous occasions that none of the information in those messages was marked classified.

At a regular briefing for reporters Wednesday, Kirby said State is aware of two instances in the set of roughly 30,000 messages turned over to the agency by Clinton where classification markings appeared in the emails. However, he said those were mistakes where staff failed to remove the notations while preparing background and talking points for Clinton in a planned phone call with a foreign official.

"It appears that those...that those markings were a human error. They didn’t need to be there. Because once the secretary had decided to make the call, the process is then to move the call sheet, to change its markings to unclassified and deliver it to the secretary in a form that he or she can use," Kirby said. "And best we can tell on these occasions, the markings — the confidential markings — was simply human error. Because the decision had already been made, they didn’t need to be made on the email."

Kirby said such "call sheets" are often treated as classified when being prepared but as unclassified when forwarded to the secretary for his or her use.

The State spokesman said he was aware of two instances where "Confidential"-level classification markings appeared in the set of emails State processed for public release under the Freedom of Information Act. He appeared to refer to a Fox News report last month that highlighted an email proposing a call from Clinton to Malawi Presidential Joyce Banda after she took power following the death of President Bingu wu Mutharika in April 2012.

"(C) Purpose of Call: to offer condolences on the passing of President Mutharika and congratulate President Banda on her recent swearing in," the message said. The "(C)" at the beginning of the paragraph signals its content is classified "Confidential," although the message appears to have been cut and pasted because it is missing the full set of markings required for a classified message.

Kirby acknowledged that he could not say for sure whether "human error" accounted for all such instances of classification markings the FBI identified in Clinton's private email account because Comey said the FBI had recovered more such emails than the ones Clinton provided to State in December 2014.

"I can't speak to that," the State spokesman said. "We also don’t have full visibility on what the FBI — the documents that the FBI referred to yesterday. We don’t have full visibility on every document that they looked at as part of their investigation."

It remained unclear Wednesday whether State and the FBI were in disagreement about whether the information in the call sheets was actually considered classified at the time they were sent to Clinton. Kirby indicated that State officials sending the information to Clinton effectively had the authority to declassify that information.

The paragraph marked confidential in the 2012 Malawi call sheet was released by State in January of this year. However, a section of the email just below that does not appear to be considered classified now, but was withheld under a FOIA exemption for internal U.S. government deliberations. Another section just below that was classified "Confidential" diplomatic information at the time of release this year. Both of those chunks were withheld in their entirety.