In early July, the FBI interviewed Hillary Clinton for three-and-a-half hours over her use of a private email server while secretary of state. The agency eventually recommended that no charges should be filed, but nonetheless reprimanded her as “extremely careless” with information that shouldn’t have floated around on unclassified servers. But in the end, the FBI didn’t find evidence to support Clinton’s intent to willfully mishandle classified information or obstruct justice.
Regardless, the State Department later reopened the investigation, and the issue has also clouded Clinton’s perceived trustworthiness in this election. The issue of the private email server will likely follow her forever, and Clinton’s FBI interview notes have now been handed over to Congress. The New York Times obtained part of these notes, and one of the revelations included Clinton’s claim that Colin Powell (who was secretary of state from 2001 to 2005) advised her that private email was the way to go. The Times reveals that Clinton was already leaning in this direction, but a dinner party conversation with Madeleine Albright, Henry Kissinger, and Condoleezza Rice sealed the deal. The incident was also corroborated by journalist Joe Conason, who’s about to publish a book about Bill Clinton:
“Toward the end of the evening, over dessert, Albright asked all of the former secretaries to offer one salient bit of counsel to the nation’s next top diplomat. Powell told her to use her own email, as he had done, except for classified communications, which he had sent and received via a State Department computer.”
Mr. Conason continued, “Saying that his use of personal email had been transformative for the department,” Mr. Powell “thus confirmed a decision she had made months earlier — to keep her personal account and use it for most messages.”
Indeed, Powell did use private email to conduct business as well. He did so exclusively, but he didn’t retain the emails. There are other key differences, including how Clinton housed her private server at her Chappaqua, New York home and used outside contractors to maintain it. And most importantly, Clinton’s tenure came along a full term after Powell vacated the position. By that time, the job included clear rules that a private server (in the way she did) was “neither allowed nor encouraged” because of the known security issues involved with doing so.
(Via New York Times & PBS)