Explain this sentence - Fitzgerald - Yesterday: "I will confirm that her association with the CIA was classified at that time through July 2003"
What's to explain?
The Intelligence Identities Protection Act speaks to a legally-defined covert status, not to classified status. They are two completely different things under the law.
Lots of people hold classified positions around DC, meaning they can't tell people what they do ("I work for the government").
But there must also be "affirmative measures to conceal such covert agent's intelligence relationship to the United States", and that person must be working abroad in order to be "covert" and covered by the Act.
My understanding FWIW: Having a "classified" position is different from being "covert."
An employee at the CIA may have a "classified" portfolio, meaning the part of their personnel file that covers them moving in and out of covert operations, their different covers over the years, etc.
A person can have a "classified" portfolio and still not be "covert"--within the meaning of the law-- at any given time. What I understand.