Bush's Secretaries of State Also Have Email Problems

Colin Powell used personal email account
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Feb 5, 2016 4:49 AM CST
Bush's Secretaries of State Also Have Email Problems
In this Jan. 19, 2011, file photo, former Secretary of State Colin Powell is seen at the State Department.   (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, File)

A welcome development for the Hillary Clinton campaign: Investigators reviewing the sending of classified State Department information have discovered that at least a dozen classified emails were sent to personal accounts linked to George W. Bush's secretaries of state, the New York Times reports. According to a letter between State officials obtained by NBC News, two emails now classified "Secret" or "Confidential" were sent to Colin Powell's personal email account, and another 10 such emails were sent to the accounts of Condoleezza Rice's close aides. In the letter, State Department Inspector General Steve Linick warns that there may be much more now-classified material buried in the department's unclassified archives.

None of the emails were classified at the time they were sent, and Powell—who was visited by the FBI for a "casual conversation" about his email, according to Politico—says the two messages from US ambassadors abroad were innocuous. "I wish they would release them, so that a normal, air-breathing mammal would look at them and say, 'What's the issue?'" he tells NBC. Clinton's campaign manager says she "agrees with her predecessor that his emails, like hers, are being inappropriately subjected to over-classification" and she "joins his call for these emails to be released so that the public can view the contents for itself." Rice's chief of staff, meanwhile, tells the Times that Rice didn't use email while serving as secretary of state, and the emails sent to her aides involved "diplomatic conversations" with no sensitive information. (Some 22 Clinton emails contained "top-secret" information.)

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