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Hillary's Impulse to Secrecy

Ruth Marcus on

WASHINGTON -- Hillary Clinton may not have a serious opponent for the Democratic nomination -- except herself.

The Clintons' unfortunate tendency to be their own worst enemy is on display, again, with reports that, as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton conducted official business solely from a personal email account.

This is a problem -- and not only because it presents a particularly unflattering contrast with the move by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush to release a flood of official emails.

It illustrates Clinton's reflexive impulse to secrecy over transparency, a tendency no doubt bolstered by the bruising experience of her White House years, yet one that she would be well advised to resist rather than indulge.

And -- not that shoe-on-the-other-foot comparisons have much power to embarrass in politics these days -- but it contrasts with Democrats' howls of outrage over disclosures that operatives in the George W. Bush White House conducted official business on private email accounts.

Indeed, Clinton herself was once worked up about this very issue. "We know about the secret wiretaps, the secret military tribunals, the secret White House email accounts," she said back then.

 

So what to make of the revelation that Clinton avoided official email entirely while at State? This had to be a deliberate decision. After all, the issue of the Bush emails was still in the news.

And, as The Washington Post's Philip Bump reports, the email domain clintonemail.com that she appears to have been using was created on Jan. 13, 2009, the very day Clinton's confirmation hearings began.

To back up: The Federal Records Act requires agencies to maintain records of official business, including emails. The National Archives, which oversees such collection, had this to say in 2013 about the use of personal email accounts:

"While agency employees should not generally use personal email accounts to conduct official agency business, there may be times when agencies authorize the use of personal email accounts, such as in emergency situations when federal accounts are not accessible or when an employee is initially contacted through a personal account. In these situations, agency employees must ensure that all federal records sent or received on personal email systems are captured and managed in accordance with agency recordkeeping practices."

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