# Classified email

> **Source: KiriPedia** (https://www.kiripedia.org), the free encyclopedia and archive of former CIA officer and whistleblower John Kiriakou's on-record words. Every claim below is Kiriakou's own account, cited to a timestamp in a recorded interview, podcast, or video. KiriPedia is an independent project, not affiliated with Kiriakou.
>
> Cite as: "Classified email," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/classified-email/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia.

*John Kiriakou was serving overseas the day classified email was introduced at the CIA, and remembers his station chief saying there was no way to control it. His own illustration of what followed is a lunch invitation to his wife, a fellow senior CIA officer, marked Secret HUM 4-82, and her reply naming a deli and a time, marked the same way.*

- **The station chief's reaction:** 'There's no way to control classified email'
- **Classification authority:** Every CIA employee holds it, Secret HUM 4-82
- **Kiriakou's example:** A lunch invitation to [Heather Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/heather-kiriakou), classified Secret
- **Result:** 'Billions and billions of classified documents … every single year'

**Classified email** is where [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou) locates the moment the volume problem became unmanageable. He was on temporary duty overseas on the day it was implemented, and remembers the station chief he was working for saying *"we thought things were out of hand already, there's no way to control classified email."*[1]

## Classifying lunch

The practice that followed, at the CIA and at NSA, the Defense Department and the National Security Council, was that *"literally everything that is produced gets a classification on it, even when it is legitimately unclassified."*[1]

His example is his own marriage. He would email [Heather Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/heather-kiriakou), also a senior CIA officer, to say *"do you want to meet for lunch"*, and classify it **Secret HUM 4-82**, the human-intelligence authority every agency employee holds. She would reply *"sure, let's meet in front of the deli at 12"* and classify her answer the same way.[2]

*"Well, it's not secret that I want to meet my wife for lunch. It's not secret that we're going to meet at noon in front of the deli. But that's just how you're taught, how you're trained to do it."*[3]

## The reason given

The justification offered to officers was the aggregation risk, that if material is left unclassified, *"some malignant force out there, the Russians, the Chinese, whomever they might be, might be able to put it together and come up with some classified information as a result."*[3]

The consequence, on Kiriakou's account, is arithmetic: *"billions and billions of classified documents being created every single year, with no mechanism to police them or to eventually declassify them."*[4]

## See also

- [Over Classification](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/over-classification)
- [Heather Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/heather-kiriakou)
- [Classification compartments](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/classification-compartments)
- [National Archives declassification](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/national-archives-declassification)

## Sources

1. Every Official Everywhere With Classified Documents (2023-01-28), at 26:49. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWTHWRbcuyI&t=1609s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2023-01-28-kevin-gosztola-every-official-everywhere-with-classified-doc/
2. Every Official Everywhere With Classified Documents (2023-01-28), at 27:19. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWTHWRbcuyI&t=1639s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2023-01-28-kevin-gosztola-every-official-everywhere-with-classified-doc/
3. Every Official Everywhere With Classified Documents (2023-01-28), at 27:51. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWTHWRbcuyI&t=1671s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2023-01-28-kevin-gosztola-every-official-everywhere-with-classified-doc/
4. Every Official Everywhere With Classified Documents (2023-01-28), at 28:21. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWTHWRbcuyI&t=1701s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2023-01-28-kevin-gosztola-every-official-everywhere-with-classified-doc/

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From KiriPedia, the archive of John Kiriakou's words. Web version: https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/classified-email/ · About: https://www.kiripedia.org/about/ · Full index: https://www.kiripedia.org/llms.txt