State Department Still Vague on Who Okayed Clinton Email Set-Up

When Hillary Clinton arrived to head the State Department in late January 2009, she would have gone through the usual orientation sessions for new top appointees, including tutorials on handling of classified information and records management.

But in the five months since the controversy erupted over her use of a private email account and home-based server, no one from State has come forward with names of the authorities who approved the unusual arrangement. Not the information technology specialists, the records management officials, the classification enforcers or the legal authorities.

The White House said in March it was not aware of the special arrangement.

The matter may be part of a State Department inspector general inquiry into general records management issues ordered in March by Secretary John Kerry. A spokesman for the inspector general referred Government Executive queries to the department.

State’s chief spokesman John Kirby, on both Tuesday and Wednesday, fielded reporters’ inquiries on the topic amid broader questioning on the pending Iran nuclear deal and the fight against ISIS.

A sample from the Tuesday briefing:

REPORTER: Were the IT people and the people at the State Department responsible for ensuring that the secretary’s communications are secure aware that Secretary Clinton was using a private email address on a private server?

MR KIRBY:  So as we’ve said before, her email address and use of this server was known to those that she worked with here at the State Department, and I think you can see evidence of that in the 3,000-plus emails that have already been publicly released.  And I think it’s important to remember – and I said this yesterday as a reminder – there was not then nor is there currently now a prohibition against using a personal email account for work.

QUESTION:  My question is not whether her email address or the private server were known to the people that she worked with, because the people that the Secretary worked with, in a sense, is a relatively small group of people….And obviously, anybody who’s emailing her knows what her email address is.  My question is whether the people in the State Department’s IT department and any other people at the State Department responsible for ensuring the security of her communications – not that they contain or don’t contain classified information – just that her communications are not subject to being wire-tapped or copied or intercepted by somebody else, because there’s got to be somebody here who is responsible for making sure that her communications or any secretary’s communications are secure – whether those two categories of people, IT and whoever’s responsible for the security of the communications, were aware that she was using a private email address that operated from a private server.

MR KIRBY:  As I said, there were people here that worked that knew of the arrangement.  The arrangement was not prohibited.  I don’t have any more details with respect to the IT people and what they did or didn’t know at the time and what they did or didn’t do at the time.

QUESTION:  So nobody from the IT department that you’re aware of knew that she was using a private email on a private server?

MR KIRBY:  I know that people here knew about this arrangement…I can’t go into…detail.

Meanwhile, State Department lawyers last Friday filed a brief in the case brought by the nonprofit Judicial Watch laying out the department’s argument that officials have been adequately responsive in turning over Clinton emails after reviewing them for classified information.

Sworn testimony from John Hackett, director of information programs and services at State, described the scope of the State offices that might have received Clinton emails relevant to the Judicial Watch request. They include the Central Foreign Policy Records File, Office of the Executive Secretariat, the Bureau of Human Resources, the Undersecretary for Management and the Office of the Legal Adviser.

Hackett’s document also confirmed that two top aides to former Secretary Clinton -- Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin -- “used personal email accounts located in commercial servers at times for government business. In addition, Abedin had an account at Clintonemail.com, which was used at times for government businesses.”

Spokesman Kirby stressed that the use of private email for business is legal. “The critical piece is here,” he said, “is that you’re retaining the records.”