BUT, GENERAL...:

Steve Linick, the inspector general for the state department, wrote in a memo that two emails sent to Powell and 10 emails sent to Rice's staff contained classified national security information.

"None of the material was marked as classified, but the substance of the material and 'Nodis' (No Distribution) references in the body or subject lines of some of the documents suggested that the documents could be potentially sensitive," Linick wrote in the memo obtained by NBC News and the Associated Press (AP).

In late December, he said, the state department told Linick's office that 12 out of 19 documents under review "contain national security information classified at the Secret or Confidential levels based on a review by nine department bureaus and office".

Powell rejected the inspector general's findings and called for the emails to be released. He told NBC News: "I wish they would release them, so that a normal, air-breathing mammal would look at them and say, 'What's the issue?'"

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