The controversy surrounding Defense Secretary Ash Carter’s use of personal email for work during the first months of his tenure as defense secretary will likely blow over quickly, analysts predicted this week.
The revelations that he used his personal email for official business were less likely to balloon into a huge scandal, like that faced by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, because he did not send any classified information through the account, and because he quickly owned up to his mistake.
“The American public are pretty darned forgiving when an official owns up without any resistance and says yeah I screwed up,” said Steve Bucci, a national security analyst with the Heritage Foundation. “Carter I think played it pretty smart.”
The New York Times reported this week that Carter had used his personal email on his iPhone for administrative work tasks for a few months.
“Particularly someone in my position, [given] the sensitivities about the position, should have known better. And there were plenty of people during the time that you’re taking office and so forth who explain to you what the rules are about e-mail. So it’s not like I didn’t have the opportunity to understand what the right thing to do is. I didn’t do the right thing. This is entirely on me,” Carter told reporters in Iraq following the reports.
The Pentagon released more than 30 pages of Carter’s emails Friday morning, which largely contain mundane administrative and scheduling questions and are dated in March and April.
“I think it will blow over quickly unless there was information bordering on classified in the emails,” said Michael O’Hanlon, a national security analyst at the Brookings Institution.
While not as troubling as sending classified information, Bucci said that even scheduling information should still be on an official account to be as safe as possible.
“Scheduling things are actually pretty important because you don’t want people to know exactly what secretary’s schedule is… especially in today’s environment when bad guys might do him harm,” he said.
The emails don’t appear to contain any classified information, but congressional leaders said they have requested hard copies of the documents to determine if any information was compromised.
Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, has asked the Defense Department inspector general to look into the contents of Carter’s emails from his time as defense secretary and deputy defense secretary, and brief Congress on its findings.
