Hillary’s State Dept Ripped an Ambassador for Using Personal Email in 2012
As Hillary Clinton is being scrutinized for using personal email to conduct official government business, a new report today reveals the State Department inspector general, while Clinton was Secretary of State, scolded the Ambassador to Kenya for––wait for it––using personal email to conduct official government business.
The Federalist unearthed details from a 2012 IG report in which former U.S. Ambassador to Kenya Scott Gration is very strongly called out for a number of failings, including losing “the respect and confidence of the staff,” “his reluctance to accept clear-cut U.S. Government decisions,” not reading important classified messages, and, yes, using personal email to conduct government business.
In fact, this is invoked in the report (available here [PDF]) multiple times. Here is what the IG report says:
His refusal to accept fully the Department’s decisions on establishing an independent Somalia Unit, on safe havening in Nairobi of families of Foreign Service officers working in extreme hardship posts, and on the nonuse of commercial email for official government business, except in emergencies, is widely known and a source of confusion and discouragement within the embassy community.
He has willfully disregarded Department regulations on the use of commercial email for official government business, including a front channel instruction from the Assistant Secretary for Diplomatic Security against such practice, which he asserted to the OIG team that he had not seen.
The Ambassador’s requirements for use of commercial email in the office and his flouting of direct instructions to adhere to Department policy have placed the information management staff in a conundrum: balancing the desire to be responsive to their mission leader and the need to adhere to Department regulations and government information security standards.
Recommendation 57: Embassy Nairobi should cease using commercial email to process Department information and use authorized Department automated information systems for conducting official business.
And Gration ended up resigning ahead of the report’s release. Spokespeople for both Clinton and the State Department have not yet commented to CNN about the matter.
For the record, this is what Gration told Foreign Policy when asked about the use of personal emails weeks after his resignation:
“I did all my official business on the State Department communications system. I supplemented it with my personal e-mail, but it was never a security issue. I have a background in secure communications. I know what is right and what is wrong. I did everything correctly, and I have nothing to be ashamed of and nothing to hide.”
[image via State Department]
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