Washington CNN  — 

Hillary Clinton’s experience as Secretary of State is one of the main points of delineation she makes when comparing herself to her opponent. CNN’s Reality Check Team put her statements and assertions about national security to the test.

The team of reporters, researchers and editors across CNN listened throughout the speech and selected key statements, rating them true; mostly true; true, but misleading; false; or it’s complicated.

Reality Check: Clinton’s emails

March 9, 2016

By Jamie Crawford, CNN National Security Producer

Clinton said the following about the investigation into her use of a private email server during her tenure as secretary of state:

“Some other parts of the government, we’re not exactly sure who, has concluded that some of the emails should be now retroactively classified. They’ve just said the same thing to former Secretary Colin Powell. They have said we’re going to retroactively classify emails you sent personally. Now, I think he was right when he said this is an absurdity. And I think that what we’ve got here is a case of over-classification.”

Clinton is correct in that the emails released by the State Department were retroactively upgraded to classified levels; 22 of those emails were upgraded to top secret, the highest level of classification. The State Department said those upgrades were done as it was determined there was a need to classify the information as they were preparing the emails for public release.

The State Department has also maintained that none of Clinton’s emails contained information that was marked as classified as it was sent.

Clinton is also correct in her assertion that Powell, who served as secretary of state during former President George W. Bush’s first term, was deemed to have dealt with classified email over a personal server during his tenure in office.

The emails were discovered during a State Department review of the email practices of the past five secretaries of state earlier this year. It found that Powell received two emails that were classified and that the “immediate staff” working for former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice received 10 emails that were classified.

“If the [State] Department wishes to say a dozen years later they should have been classified that is an opinion of the Department that I do not share,” Powell said in a statement at the time. “I have reviewed the messages and I do not see what makes them classified.”

During the process by the State Department that worked for the release of over 52,000 pages of Clinton’s emails from her personal server, 2,101 were retroactively classified, including those 22 to the highest level.

But it should be noted that Clinton’s statement that “my predecessors did the same thing” in the same answer is not entirely accurate. While Powell used a private email account occasionally (and Rice actually never used email herself during her tenure), none of her predecessors used a private server for the entirety of their tenure, as Clinton did.

Verdict: TRUE, BUT MISLEADING.

Reality Check: Clinton on Guantanamo Bay detention center

February 23, 2016

By Eve Bower, CNN

Clinton said, “I’ve been on record in favor of closing (the detention center at Guantanamo Bay) for a long time, since 2008.” Speaking about where detainees would be transferred, she further said, “I remember back in the ’08 election, President Obama, Senator (John) McCain and I all had the same position.”

In 2008, Obama, McCain and Clinton all campaigned on the position that the prison camp at Guantanamo, also known as Gitmo, should be closed. Therefore, we rate her first claim TRUE. Clinton was indeed on the record throughout her 2008 run in favor of closing the facility.

Her second claim, however, that they “all had the same position” about prisoners’ fates beyond Guantanamo’s walls is FALSE. There was significant disagreement between them while all three were in the Senate. In 2006, Congress passed the Military Commissions Act, which, among other measures, denied access to civilian courts for Guantanamo detainees. The Supreme Court later struck down that part of the act. But McCain, an Arizona Republican, had been a primary backer of the bill, and even after the Supreme Court struck down a portion of it, he expressed his concern over the ruling. Both Obama and Clinton had voted against the bill. Clinton said at the time, “in the process of accomplishing what is essential for our security, we must hold onto our values and set an example we can point to with pride and not shame.”

The three were united in their support of closing the prison at Guantanamo, but that obscures their significant disagreements on prisoner rights beyond those walls.