Hillary Clinton’s State Department was cited nine times by its own inspector general for improperly using personal email accounts, storing records on personal email, or not properly archiving emails.
As Clinton comes under fire for her use of the personal email account HDR22@clintonemail.com during her tenure as secretary of state, records reveal that personal email storage was a department-wide problem, both at U.S. embassies and at top State Department bureaus.
Three more inspector general reports made reference to personal email use since 2013, after Clinton left the State Department.
Let’s focus on the nine reports that circulated within the Obama administration during Clinton’s tenure at State, as flagged by the legal advocacy firm Cause of Action and provided to The Daily Caller:
1. Emails were not being recorded at the Bureau of Administration at Harry S. Truman Building Headquarters in Washington, D.C.
“In 2011, for example, SMART captured 61,156 of an estimated 15 million record emails in the system that should be captured. The OIG team noted that confusion among Department employees and, in some cases, inadequate performance have resulted in an underuse of SMART’s record email function” according to a September 2012 inspector general report.
2. Documents were being stored in personal email at the Bureau of Information Resource Management (Hillary’s IT department), an inspector general report found in June 2012
“Contract documentation is located in multiple places, including personal emails, several electronic library sites, and in hard copy.”
3. A March 2010 inspector general report found State Department officers in Saudi Arabia storing emails in “personal email folders.”
“Officers have not implemented Departmental procedures on information sharing and document management, as is required by Foreign Affairs Manual [5 FAM 400] and the Foreign Affairs Handbook [5 FAH-1 H-300]. Instead, officers retain material in personal email folders that are not accessible to colleagues when an officer is out of the office, away on leave, or departs from post.”
4. Emails were not being saved in Thailand, according to a November 2010 inspector general report
“Neither Embassy Bangkok nor Consulate General Chiang Mai is implementing Departmental procedures on records management and annual retirement of files, as required by 5 FAM 414.5 and 5 FAH-4 H-113. Email messages that meet the definition of records in 5 FAM 443.2 a. are not preserved.”
5. The embassy in Jakarta was using private email, the inspector general found in March 2011
“Officers retain information in personal email folders or electronic document folders that are not readily accessible to colleagues when an officer is out of the office, away on leave, or departs from post.”
6. The embassy in Dili, East Timor was using personal email, the inspector general reported in March 2011
“Officers retain information in personal email folders or electronic document folders that are not readily accessible to colleagues who may need to access the information when an officer is out absent or has been transferred.” (“Inspection Of Embassy Dili, Timor-Leste.”
7. Personal email folders were mostly used at the embassy in Singapore, according to a June 2012 inspector general report
“Embassy personnel retain emails primarily in personal email folders and have not yet started to preserve email messages that meet the definition of records in 5 FAM 443.2. The section also has not retired files in many years, as required by 5 FAM 433b.”
8. Embassy in Madrid used personal email folders, said a September 2012 inspector general report
“Embassy Madrid has not maintained its files properly. Failure to maintain and organize work products correctly impedes information retrieval. Further, the political and economic sections do not place work products in shared section folders. Retaining a large amount of work material in personal email folders is inefficient.”
9. Personal email problems plagued the embassy in Lisbon, Portgual, according to a September 2012 inspector general report
“Embassy Lisbon has not maintained its files properly. Further, the political/economic section does not place work products in shared section folders…Failure to maintain and organize work products impedes information retrieval. Retaining a large amount of work material in personal email folders is inefficient.”