Despite Hillary Clinton’s repeated assurances that her use of a personal email account and server was not an issue in the security and preservation of her correspondence as secretary of state, evidence continues to pile up to the contrary. Not only did Secretary Clinton use her own personal account, she also showed a willingness to use the personal accounts of other State Department personnel to work around her “email glitches” that plagued her throughout her tenure.
On September 24, 2010, Clinton aide and State Department staffer Jake Sullivan emailed Clinton at [email protected] regarding a conference call the following day. Although Clinton replied to Sullivan’s State Department email account, she also sent the following:
There is no record in emails released by the State Department that Sullivan ever replied to the email from either of his accounts.
The glitch is not unique for Clinton’s email communications. An October 16, 2011, email to state department staffer Monica Hanley: “Monica–did you not get my response sent below? I’m worried about continuing BB [Blackberry] problems.” (Hanley replied that she indeed got the message in this case.)
In December 2009, long-time Clinton friend and then president of the Brookings institution Strobe Talbott emailed Mrs. Clinton on her BlackBerry at [email protected]. However, he soon followed up with Clinton aides Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills, writing, “Cheryl or Huma, this message bounced back from [email protected], which is the only email address I’ve got for HRC.” (This was inaccurate; Talbott actually carbon-copied his message to Mills and Abedin with another Clinton address, [email protected]. Abedin, however, forwarded the message to Clinton, who replied to Talbott directly from yet another address, [email protected], saying, “Can you confirm my email address thru this–i don’t want you wandering around cyberspace!”)
With only two weeks to the election, Clinton’s email woes seem likely to continue as additional emails that have similarly been “wandering around cyberspace” come to the surface.
