Ambassador Caroline Kennedy became the latest high-level official in the Obama administration to be cited for conducting government business on a personal email account Tuesday when an inspector general criticized the risky practice.
“Such risks include data loss, hacking, phishing, and spoofing of email accounts, as well as inadequate protections for personally identifiable information,” the watchdog wrote in a report.
Kennedy, who secured her ambassadorship to Japan in 2013 after supporting President Obama’s reelection campaign, joins a host of administration officials who have faced public criticism for using a private email account to shield public records from scrutiny.
The recurring problem has plagued the State Department, the EPA, the IRS and other agencies, underscoring concerns that the Obama administration has been especially resistant to transparency despite the president’s inaugural pledge to make his the “most transparent administration in history.”
When government officials use private email accounts, they exclude records from release under the Freedom of Information Act, thereby weakening the law. Officials can also hamper present or future investigations by hiding their correspondence in a second inbox.
Lois Lerner, the former head of the Internal Revenue Service’s tax-exempt unit, has long battled questions about emails that disappeared off her laptop amid a congressional investigation.
The IRS revealed a previously undisclosed account belonging to Lerner in court filings Monday, indicating Lerner funneled some of her communications to a personal account bearing the name “Toby Miles.”
Lerner had used yet another personal account listed as “Lois Home.” Her attorneys have provided some emails to the government from her private addresses.
The embattled former official faced allegations that she led her agency in targeting conservative groups for extra scrutiny, but the congressional probe into her activity was stymied when thousands of her official emails were declared missing.
Lerner may have hidden additional communications by emailing as “Toby Miles,” the IRS filings suggest.
Rafael Moure-Eraso, former head of the Chemical Safety Board, was pressured to resign from his post by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee after he misled lawmakers about his private email use.
Members of the oversight committee suggested Moure-Eraso may have used the personal account to circumvent the Federal Records Act, an allegation he denied.
The committee has since called for a criminal investigation of Moure-Eraso’s private email use.
Senior officials with the Environmental Protection Agency have been accused of using private email accounts to mask their activities as far back as 2012.
Lisa Jackson, who was appointed by Obama to lead the EPA from 2009 to 2013, echoed Lerner in using a pseudonym to disguise a second email address.
“While we understand the need for a secondary account for management and communication purposes, your choice to use a false identity remains baffling,” the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology wrote in a Dec. 2012 letter to Jackson.
Jackson had admitted in November of that year to using the nom de plume “Richard Windsor.”
But perhaps no agency has struggled so publicly with its officials using private email as the State Department.
In 2012, the agency ousted Scott Gration, then the ambassador to Kenya, in part for using a commercial email account.
Gration, who set up an unsecured network in the bathroom of his embassy office, broke State Department protocol by using an unauthorized email system to conduct government business.
Hillary Clinton had established her own private network — reportedly at her home in Chappaqua — to host all communications when she ran the agency that dismissed Gration for a nearly identical offense.
Hers is the most high-profile case of private email use in history.
The controversy over Hillary Clinton’s personal emails has dragged her poll numbers down in recent weeks, puncturing the veneer of inevitability she once enjoyed and leaving open the possibility that Vice President Joe Biden could enter the race amid an FBI investigation into Clinton’s activities.
Her decision to use a private email account has refocused attention on the problems government officials create when they eschew email protocol in favor of private accounts.
