WASHINGTON — Former Secretary of State Colin Powell and the immediate staff of former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice also received classified national security information on their personal email accounts, according to a memo written by the State Department watchdog that was released Thursday.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a personal email server has dogged her presidential campaign. Her campaign could try to blunt the criticism with the news that her predecessors in Republican administrations might have received such information on nonsecure servers.
Steve Linick, the inspector general for the State Department, said in a memo dated Wednesday that two emails sent to Powell and 10 emails sent to Rice’s staff contained classified national security information. Powell and Rice were the top diplomats under Republican President George W. Bush.
The memo was first reported by NBC News. The Associated Press later obtained a copy.
“None of the material was marked as classified, but the substance of the material and ‘NODIS’ (No Distribution) references in the body or subject lines of some of the documents suggested that the documents could be potentially sensitive,” Linick wrote in the memo.
He wrote that in mid-October his office sent 19 documents to the inspector general for the intelligence community, which determined in mid-December that they didn’t contain any intelligence community information.
In late December, however, the State Department told Linick’s office that 12 of the 19 documents “contain national security information classified at the Secret or Confidential levels based on a review by nine department bureaus and offices.”
In a statement, Powell said the emails were from his executive assistant. He said they were forwarded messages that two U.S. ambassadors sent to members of the State Department’s staff. “My executive assistant thought I should see them in a timely manner so sent them to my personal account,” he said.
He said that while the department now has said they are “confidential,” which is a low level of classification, both messages were unclassified at the time and there was no reason not to forward them to his personal account.
“I have reviewed the messages and I do not see what makes them classified,” Powell said. “The ambassadors did not believe the contents were confidential at the time and they were sent as unclassified.”
Georgia Godfrey, chief of staff for Rice, said Rice did not use email as secretary nor have a personal email account. She said it’s her understanding that the emails in question were sent to Rice’s assistant, “reporting diplomatic conversations and they contained no intelligence information.”
Clinton, meantime, is facing new scrutiny from congressional Republicans as a fourth committee is pressing for general information about the handling of government documents, use of personal emails and the response to Freedom of Information Act requests during her time at the State Department.
Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, sent a Jan. 19 letter to Secretary of State John Kerry asking for information and documents, citing the panel’s jurisdiction over implementation of FOIA requests. His request included material from current and former secretaries of State.
Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings, senior Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, said, “My concern has been that Republicans are spending millions of taxpayer dollars singling out Secretary Clinton because she is running for president — often leaking inaccurate information — while at the same time disregarding the actions of Republican secretaries of state.”
