Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter used his personal email for work-related business, joining former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as the second member of Obama’s cabinet to do so.
Carter used his personal email account for official business for the few months he served as secretary of defense earlier this year, as first reported by the New York Times.
“After reviewing his email practices earlier this year, the secretary believes that his previous, occasional use of personal email for work-related business, even for routine administrative issues and backed up to his official account, was a mistake. As a result, he stopped such use of his personal email and further limited his use of email altogether,” Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook said in a statement Wednesday night.
The defense secretary’s use of his personal email for work continued for at least two months after Clinton’s use of a private email server for official government business made headlines and drew much criticism in March, the New York Times reported.
Cook also said that Carter “strongly prefers” communicating via phone or in person rather than over email and that he does not directly email anyone within the Defense Department or U.S. government more broadly, except for a “very small ground of senior advisers.”
Any work email received on his personal account is forwarded to his official account to be preserved as part of the federal record, Cook said.
The press secretary also stressed that Carter does not send any classified information over either email account.
“The secretary has a secure communications team that handles his classified information and provides it to him as necessary. Memoranda are provided to him in hard copy. He takes his responsibilities with regard to classified material very seriously,” Cook said.
