Peter Van Buren can’t wait for the court-ordered release of Hillary Clinton’s work emails from 2011, a nearly ruinous year for him that resulted in a negotiated retirement from the State Department.

The foreign affairs arm of the federal government, then led by Clinton, had accused the longtime foreign service officer of mishandling classified information and unsuccessfully asked the Justice Department to prosecute him.

Van Buren says his travails demonstrate a double standard at the State Department, which now defends Clinton’s use of a private email system that this week was revealed to contain highly classified top secret information.

At the same time Clinton, now the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, was using her private and apparently unsecure email system, Van Buren lost his security clearance and then his job as a result of what he views as false allegations of mishandling information that wasn't secret at all.

The problems began in late 2010 when Van Buren wrote a book titled “We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People.” He submitted it to the department for prepublication review and, after a mandatory waiting period in 2011, it was shipped to bookstores. Just before it hit the shelves, his publisher was urged to hit the brakes.

There were three allegedly classified details, the department claimed about the book poised to sharply criticize U.S. diplomatic efforts. The details including mention that an unnamed CIA officer who had worked in Iraq and Afghanistan had also worked in Somalia, that the CIA controlled the budget of Iraqi intelligence services – a rehash, the author says, of mainstream press reporting – and that the CIA had once worked with Saddam Hussein.

Van Buren's publisher concluded the contested passages “clearly did not contain classified information” and brushed off the threat without legal consequences.

Then a ton of bricks fell on Van Buren. His security clearance was suspended. His access to State Department facilities was restricted. He was essentially unable to work. The reason he was given, he recalls, was that he linked to a WikiLeaks cable on his personal blog.

The cable, with the low classification "confidential," recounted an apparently chummy visit that Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., had with Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi in 2009.

The State Department told Van Buren, a 24-year diplomat, in 2012 he was being fired.

The Washington Post reported eight alleged infractions, including linking to WikiLeaks on his blog, not clearing blog posts with the department, exhibiting a “lack of candor” with diplomatic security officers, allegedly leaking classified information in his book and showing “bad judgement” by criticizing Clinton and then-Rep. Michele Bachmann on his blog.

The revelation that the State Department’s diplomatic security branch requested Van Buren be prosecuted came later, after his negotiated exit.

Van Buren believes the emails in Clinton’s private server that contained highly classified information did not include documents, but the information itself, and that the State Department is being deceptive in making the true but incomplete statement that the messages “were not marked as classified” when they were sent, as spokesman John Kirby said Wednesday.

Low-level diplomats who do so much as leave a document of low classification on a guarded embassy desk, Van Buren says, risk demerits that jeopardize future job prospects.

“I cannot conceive any other person in government being able to do what she did without being punished,” he says. “Lots of people have lost their clearances, lost their jobs and in some cases lost their freedom and gone to jail” for allegedly being careless in protecting classified documents.

Van Buren isn't sure how closely Clinton followed his case, but he heard through the rumor mill that Clinton became aware of it in October 2011 when The New York Times reported on his book and State Department pushback.

The man he believes led the investigation into him, Van Buren says, reported to Clinton and “is not a bureaucrat who sticks his neck out unwisely, and he would not proceed in something as public as my case was without keeping her office informed.”

Mishandling classified documents often is alleged when authorities seek to punish embarrassing leaks to the press, but also appears in lesser-known cases, such as the prosecution of Arabic translator James Hitselberger, who was fired and criminally charged for printing two classified documents and attempting to leave a Bahrain naval base. He pleaded guilty to mishandling documents last year.

Hitselberger admitted to unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents to spare himself a potentially lengthy prison sentence, maintaining he was innocent of purposeful wrongdoing. He offered an explanation similar to Clinton's justification for using a person email server: convenience. He wanted to read them at home.

“When a Master Sergeant who was standing nearby told Mr. Hitselberger that he needed the computer and Mr. Hitselberger would have to sign off, Mr. Hitselberger decided to read the documents in his living quarters," his attorneys wrote in court documents after his guilty plea. "He then – in full view of the Master Sergeant and with other military personnel in the surrounding area – printed the documents, put them in his backpack and walked out of the secured area. For doing so, he already has been severely punished, and no additional punishment is necessary.”

Hitselberger was stopped a short distance from the printer and two documents were taken from him. His public defender who brokered the plea deal, Mary Petras, did not respond to a request for comment on how the case compares to the Clinton email controversy.

Jesselyn Radack, a whistleblower attorney who represented Van Buren and many others who allegedly mishandled classified documents – including NSA whistleblowers Thomas Drake and Edward Snowden – noted in a Wednesday article for the Daily Kos that Clinton’s attorney handling the email controversy, David Kendall, also won a generous plea deal for retired Gen. David Petraeus, who was not sent to prison for sharing highly classified information with an author with whom he was having a sexual affair.

“There’s no dispute that there is a two-tiered system of justice for those who are powerful or politically-connected,” Radack wrote. She added she hopes the controversy will prompt the presidential candidate to “reconsider the wisdom of prosecuting non-spies – especially whistleblowers – for espionage.”

Not all defense attorneys involved in cases of alleged mishandling of documents see hypocrisy, however.

“While it is fair to criticize the manner in which she handled the emails, I do not believe that anyone has ever been criminally prosecuted, or even threatened with criminal prosecution, for failing to use secure means to transmit a document that at the time of transmission was not considered classified," says Barry Pollack, who represents WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange and worked on the legal team of Jeffrey Sterling, sentenced to prison in May for exposing secrets to a reporter.

Clinton is not expected to be prosecuted for mishandling classified information, despite ongoing reviews of her email practices by the Justice Department and inspectors general.

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Clinton campaign spokeswoman Jennifer Palmieri attempted to reassure campaign supporters Wednesday, after news that top secret information was found among Clinton's emails.