The State Department’s watchdog reported finding sensitive information in the unclassified archives of previous secretaries of State, including emails containing sensitive information that were sent to the personal accounts of secretaries and staff from the Bush administration.
The inspector general also said in a report dated Wednesday and made public Friday that it considers the matter resolved.
Foggy Bottom officials moved the documents sent to former Secretaries of State Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, and some unnamed staffers, to secure storage, the inspector general reported.
State’s inspector general, as part of the sprawling investigation into the handling of sensitive and classified information during Clinton’s tenure, found the documents as it examined the maintenance of sensitive records and use of personal accounts and hardware by former State leaders Clinton, Powell, Rice and Madeleine Albright, as well as current Secretary John Kerry.
“None of the material was marked as classified, but the substance of the material and [subject lines] of some of the documents suggested that the documents could be potentially sensitive,” the inspector general wrote. The inspector general for the intelligence agencies reviewed the material discovered by State Department investigators and determined that no intelligence community information was found in the flagged documents, which were transmitted between February 2003 and June 2008.
State’s examiners said 12 of 19 earmarked documents contained national security information classified as “secret” or “confidential.”
White House spokesman Josh Earnest declined to comment on the latest development in the long-running investigation.
“I’m reluctant to weigh in directly … because there is an ongoing independent investigation into this, and I certainly want to avoid even the appearance of trying to influence the outcome of that independent investigation by suggesting … the president’s view of how it should conclude,” Earnest said on Friday.
“[W]e’ve all along been respectful of that ongoing independent investigation,” he added.
