All cables are marked with a security classification and depending upon the length, individual paragraphs would be marked with a classification. Hillary received cables as well as emails.
There seems to be some confusion on emails and cable transmission. The classified system has both.
That's what HRC means when she say they weren't marked "classified". It's the same what the meaning of is, is. It's also demonstrates her team put a lot of thought into her standard rejoinder.
Actually, I’m not sure that’s true since both of us retired.
I know right before I retired, we were implementing the DMS—the Defense Messaging System, which went from Western Union style telgrams, which we called communications center messages or cable transmissions, to email style communications.
It wasn’t easy to do.
For example, with a cable, say a high priority impending war message coming in at midnight, the comm center operator would immediately inform the command post who would wake a sleeping commander if need be to receive and verify the message. You can’t do that with a direct email going to say, commander@bigoverseasbase.af.mil, unless he’s lying in bed with his email client open on his laptop right there in front of him.
So the idea was to use a command post address that was manned 24/7, and a priority traffic scheme to ensure such important things didn’t buried in a server somewhere.
Now, I retired just as we were putting the system in, first at Ramstein in Germany, and then when I got to Maxwell AFB in Alabama. But we did have plans to turn off the comm centers in the late 90’s once everything was set up and running.