Former Secretary of State Colin Powell has spoken out after claims regarding Former Secretary of State (and current Democratic nominee) Hillary Clinton’s decision to use private email. In July, the FBI grilled Clinton (for three-and-a-half hours) over her use of a private email server, and the New York Times reported on some of the notes from this meeting. Eventually, the FBI recommended against pressing charges, but still publicly declared Clinton to be “extremely careless” with her use of the server.
Naturally, the media’s still talking about Clinton’s email because it affects her trustworthiness factor. And the New York Times article referenced passages from journalist Joe Conason’s upcoming book about Bill Clinton along with the FBI interview notes. Both sources revealed Clinton’s claim that Powell advised her to use private email. And Conason’s retelling included a dinner party where (“over dessert”) Powell allegedly encouraged Clinton to “use her own email, as he had done, except for classified communications, which he had sent and received via a State Department computer.” Conason wrote how this prompted Clinton decided to stick with her prior decision and “keep her personal account and use it for most messages.” And she used a private email server to boot.
This is awfully muddled, but the information has arrived through a few filters. Powell has now issued a statement, in which he disputes Conason’s claims of any such dinner party conversation. Bradd Jaffy of NBC News tweeted a copy of Powell’s full statement:
General Powell has no recollection of the dinner conversation. He did write former Secretary Clinton an email memo describing his use of his personal AOL email account for unclassified messages and how it vastly improved communications within the State Department. At the time there was no equivalent system within the Department. He used a secure State computer on his desk to manage classified information. The General no longer has the email he sent to former Secretary Clinton. It may exist in State or FBI files. For a complete discussion of his use of private emails he refers you to chapter 16, “Brainware” of his recent book, It Worked For Me — In Life and Leadership, published in 2012.
So, Powell’s clarifying that the dinner conversation didn’t happen, but he did send Clinton an email about emails. Within this correspondence, Powell said his AOL account “vastly improved communications” regarding unclassified material. Powell emphasizes how classified information was only contained on the secure State machine on his desk, and if you’d like to read his book, he talked about it there too.
What a mess. And now we’ll probably never hear more tales about a shared dessert between Clinton, Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Madeline Albright, and Henry Kissinger. Instead, this story’s turning into a pie to the face, and the public shall await results of the State Department investigation into Clinton’s private email server.