An internal email chain from Hillary Clinton’s early days at the State Department suggests Clinton’s staff initially sought a “super encrypted” Blackberry for the secretary of state before apparently abandoning those plans in favor of a personal device.
The records indicate Cheryl Mills, then Clinton’s chief of staff, had pushed for a secure cellphone because Clinton did “not know how to use a computer to do email,” according to an exchange obtained through the Freedom of Information Act by conservative watchdog Judicial Watch.
“[I]s there any solution to her being able to use an encrypted [Blackberry] like the NSA-approved one [President Obama] has in the vault and if so, how can we get her one?” Mills wrote to Lewis Lukens, a State Department official, in February 2009.
Lukens said he was “checking into” the secured Blackberry phone but suggested, in the meantime, that Clinton’s staff set up a computer in Clinton’s office.
“Also think we should go ahead (but will await your green light) and set up a stand alone PC in the Secretary’s office, connected to the internet (but not through our system) to enable her to check her emails from her desk,” Lukens wrote. It is unclear whether he was simply describing an unclassified system or a totally independent server network, such as the one Clinton ultimately used to host her communications.
The email exchange, which was made public Monday, struck a different tone than messages sent just one month later in which diplomatic security officials voiced their concerns over Clinton and her team’s use of Blackberries.
In fact, Clinton and her staff were advised against using Blackberries for official communications.
According to court documents filed by the State Department in August, the agency never gave Clinton a Blackberry. The phone she carried during her time as secretary of state was her own.
Clinton faces renewed scrutiny over her private email use given the State Department’s announcement late last week that it intended to block the release of 37 pages of emails it deemed “top secret.”
