No, Hillary's emails were not "beyond Top Secret"

Emails from Hillary Clinton's home server contained information classified at levels higher than previously known, including a level meant to protect some of the most sensitive U.S. intelligence, according to a document obtained by NBC News.

In a letter to lawmakers, the intelligence community's internal watchdog says some of Clinton's emails contained information classified Top Secret/Special Access Program, a secrecy designation that includes some of the most closely held U.S. intelligence matters.

Story here.

No, Hillary's SAP emails were not "beyond Top Secret."

Let me explain how the US information-classification system works and what the labels mean.

There are three classification labels. From lowest to highest they are Confidential, Secret and Top Secret.

Each label is a notice as to what level of physical (think, "lock and key") security the document or material is required to receive. That is, a TS document must be maintained under stricter physical security than a Secret document, which in turn must be maintained under stricter physical security than a Confidential document. And the same applies for electronic security.

And that is really all that classification labels do: require certain levels of physical or electronic security.

What the media are doing is confusing access authorization with classification label. When I began active duty I was granted a Secret clearance. That meant I could not view or handle or have access to material under the Top Secret label. Later, I was given a TS clearance, so I was authorized to view, handle, and have access to TS material. However, if the TS material was further categorized (not further "classified") as, say, SCI (Special Compartmented Information) then I could not have access to it. Later, the SCI access was added to my clearance and I could (referred to as TS/SCI in parlance).

However, the physical or electronic security requirements of TS/SCI material was the same as plain-label TS material. Only the need-to-know access was different. Need-to-know access for TS material is always more tightly controlled than for Secret and Confidential. A common such label is NOFORN, which simply means, "No Foreign Nationals" may have access to it.

That's what Hillary's SAP emails are - a category of access that is defined in US government regs, that is, TS/SAP.

When I worked in the Army Operations Center in the Pentagon, we had many such access categories attached to TS stuff. One I remember was called Polar Flight. I didn't have access so I have no idea what it was about. All Polar Flight materials were kept together but their "lock and key" protection was the same as plain-label TS materials.

There is a label called For Official Use Only, FOUO, but this is only a handling instruction, not a classification - that is, there is no such thing as a FOUO "clearance." FOUO material is definitionally unclassified.

I was told by someone I trust that there is a classification label called "Presidential" that is above TS, but my guess is that it is really an access-control category stricter than even SAP. The lock and key requirements of TS are so strict that it's hard to imagine making them stricter. But maybe it really is above TS, I dunno.

In NATO, Top Secret is called Cosmic Top Secret. Our label Secret is called NATO Secret, then NATO Confidential below that. NATO also uses NATO Restricted as a security classification, but it corresponds to our unclassified FOUO label.

As of 2014, the British government used three classification levels, Official, Secret and Top Secret (from low to high). This replaced an older, cumbersome five-level system.