In the early months of his tenure heading up the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Ash Carter used a personal email account to conduct some government business, including email exchanges with top aides and advisers, according to published reports.
Carter’s use of personal email unfolded even as former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was under fire for using her own personal email server for work purposes.
The New York Times obtained some of Carter’s emails, and while Defense Department officials downplayed the secretary’s use of his personal email account and emphasized that no classified material was in any of the emails, a spokesman acknowledged the errors.
“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,” Peter Cook, DoD spokesman, according to the Times. “As a result, he stopped such use of is personal email and further limited his use of email altogether.”
Cook declined to say whether Carter’s email use was a violation of policy, but DoD has had policies in place since 2012 that ban Pentagon employees from relying on personal email to conduct government business, and last year President Barack Obama signed off on a law restricting personal email use unless the emails were copied directly into government accounts or forwarded to government accounts within 20 days.
But Cook said that Carter uses email sparingly, preferring to conduct business in person or over the phone.
“He does have a personal email account that he uses to correspond primarily with friends and family. Any email related to work received on this personal account, such as an invitation to speak at an event or an administrative issue, is copied or forwarded to his official account so it can be preserved as a federal record as appropriate,” Cook said, according to CNN.
On Thursday Carter said he used his iPhone for “administrative messages,” but also that he recognizes his wrongdoing and accepts responsibility for his actions.
The personal email use was “a mistake and it’s entirely my own,” Carter said, according to the AP. “I have to hold myself to absolutely strict standards in terms of cybersecurity and doing things that are appropriate. I didn’t in this case.”
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, issued a statement saying he found it “hard to believe that Secretary Carter would exercise the same error in judgment” in light of the attention for Clinton’s email use. McCain also said he plans to review copies of the emails “to ensure sensitive information was not compromised.”
