WASHINGTON — Senior Obama administration officials knew as early as 2009 that Hillary Rodham Clinton was using a private e-mail address for her government correspondence.
White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel requested Clinton’s e-mail address on Sept. 5, 2009, according to one of some 3,000 pages of correspondence released by the State Department on Tuesday evening. His request came three months after top Obama strategist David Axelrod corresponded with Clinton, now a Democratic presidential contender, at her private address.
But it’s unclear whether the officials realized Clinton was running her e-mail from a server located in her Chappaqua, N.Y., home — a potential security risk and violation of administration policy.
The newly released e-mails show Clinton sent or received at least 12 messages in 2009 on her private e-mail server that were later classified “confidential” by the U.S. government. Those e-mails were censored because officials said they contained activities relating to the intelligence community, or had discussed the production and dissemination of U.S. intelligence information.
At least two dozen e-mails were also marked “sensitive but unclassified” at the time they were written, including a December 2009 message from top Clinton aide Huma Abedin about an explosion in Baghdad that killed 90.
Though Clinton has said her home system included “numerous safeguards,” it’s not clear if it used encryption software to communicate securely with government e-mail services. That would have protected her communications from the prying eyes of foreign spies or hackers.
