State Dept. watchdog: Clinton violated email rules

[pnwmom]

96. That is untrue. There has been no evidence that anything on her server was classified

at the time the document was created.

Some of her emails were retroactively classified, years later, as part of a FOIA response.

And Powell used his AOL account for all non-classified emails. He never used the .gov account.

http://www.newsweek.com/2016/02/19/colin-powell-emails-hillary-clinton-424187.html

In addition to the classified email system used in SCIFs, there are personal email accounts. Prior to 2013, these could be accounts inside the relatively unsecure State Department system or private email accounts. If they are private—running through a commercial or personal server—they have to follow some rules set up in the Federal Register . There are no guards, no red-black procedures, no construction rules, no special rooms, no TEMPEST, no TSCM. And most important: Until 2013, there was no rule against using them. In fact, the rules specifically allowed for them. Check out the relevant section in the Code of Federal Regulations (36 CFR Chapter XII, Subchapter B, section 1236.22b) for the rules regarding the use of personal email accounts by any State Department official.

To give an idea of how insecure these communications could be, Powell’s personal email is an AOL account, and he used it on a laptop when he communicated with foreign officials and ambassadors, unless the information qualified for a SCIF. (Clinton sent only one email to a foreign dignitary through her personal account, and her communications with ambassadors were, for the most part, by phone.)

SNIP

So did Powell and the aides to Rice violate rules governing classified information, since the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) staff has recently determined that some of their years-old personal emails contain top-secret material? No. The rules regarding the handling of classified information apply to communications designated as secret at that time . If documents that aren’t deemed classified, and aren’t handled through a SCIF when they are created or initially transmitted, are later, in retrospect, deemed secret, the classification is new—and however the record was handled in the past is irrelevant.