Dear Editor:

While I disagree with the entirety of Mr. Molvar's letter in the July 6 edition of the Register, I wish only to comment on the issue of Sec'y Clinton's alleged mishandling of classfied information (email).

I spent 38 years associated with Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) including multi-year assignments to EURATOM, DOE, and the IAEA. For almost 30 years, I held a Q-Access-Clearance that required me to be well versed in U.S. classification rules and law. This clearance gave me access to top secret and restricted data (RD), if I had a need to know. RD is information relating to nuclear weapons and their production. The Top Secret Access Clearance (TS) held by most State and Defense Department staff does not give access to RD. The TS clearance gives access to National Security Information (NSI); such information is not Born Classified, as is RD, and must be assigned a classification level Confidential (CNSI), Secret (SNSI), or Top Secret (TSNSI) by a derivative classifier. If not so marked, it is unclassified when read, even if an organization like State, FBI, or CIA judges it later to be Classified.

State Department cables and email have a header that states the classification of the information contained therein. Everything I've read says that none of what Sec'y Clinton received was marked Classified; this means the statements of FBI Director Comey, our media, and candidate Trump were misleading and essentially incorrect; they were also very damning to Mrs. Clinton's campaign.

Dr. T. Douglas Reilly

Los Alamos, New Mexico

Summer resident of Boothbay Harbor