Former Secretary of State Colin Powell sent Hillary Clinton
Hillary Rodham ClintonTrump talks with Canadian PM Trump, Ryan signal new chapter in relationship Trump win sets off industry scramble MORE a detailed explanation of how he got around some of the State Department's security measures in a 2009 email that has become wrapped up in the investigation of Clinton's use of private email server while leading State.
“What I did do was have a personal computer that was hooked up to a private phone line (sounds ancient.),” Powell wrote. “So I could communicate with a wide range of friends directly without it going through the State Department servers."
"I even used it to do business with some foreign leaders and some of the senior folks in the Department on their personal email accounts. I did the same thing on the road in hotels," he said.
Powell was responding to a question from Clinton, now the Democratic nominee for president, about the restrictions on using a BlackBerry while in office.
Cummings said the exchange proved that Clinton’s private email server was not far out of the norm for a secretary of State.
“When I asked why not they gave me all kinds of nonsense about how they gave out signals and could be read by spies, etc.,” he said. “Same reason they tried to keep mobile phones out of the suite. I had numerous meetings with them. We even opened one up for them to try to explain to me why it was more dangerous than say, a remote control for one of the many tvs in the suite. Or something embedded in my shoe heel.”
“So, we just went about our business and stopped asking,” he wrote. “I had an ancient version of a PDA and used it. In general, the suite was so sealed that it is hard to get signals in or out wirelessly.”
But he warned Clinton "there is a real danger" in using a BlackBerry.
“If it is public that you have a BlackBerry and it it [sic] government and you are using it, government or not, to do business, it may become an official record and subject to the law," he wrote.
“Be very careful,” he added. “I got around it all by not saying much and not using systems that captured the data.”
Powell had publicly rebuked Clinton after it was reported that she told the FBI that he had advised her that it would be easier for her to use a private email account.
“Her people have been trying to pin it on me,” Powell told People Magazine in August. “The truth is she was using [her email setup] for a year before I sent her a memo telling her what I did.”
