A White House official emailed Chuck Hagel
Charles (Chuck) Timothy HagelOvernight Defense: US, Russia tensions grow over nuclear arms | Highlights from Esper's Asia trip | Trump strikes neutral tone on Hong Kong protests | General orders ethics review of special forces Five takeaways from Pentagon chief's first major trip Esper given horse in Mongolia as US looks for new inroads against China MORE using his personal address for official business at least once when he was secretary of Defense.
Charles (Chuck) Timothy HagelOvernight Defense: US, Russia tensions grow over nuclear arms | Highlights from Esper's Asia trip | Trump strikes neutral tone on Hong Kong protests | General orders ethics review of special forces Five takeaways from Pentagon chief's first major trip Esper given horse in Mongolia as US looks for new inroads against China MORE using his personal address for official business at least once when he was secretary of Defense.In the fall of 2013, White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough wrote to cabinet secretaries about the government shutdown. He did not include Hagel's official address, but did include the address cthsd24@gmail.com.
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Hagel's initials are "CTH" — his middle name is Timothy — and he was the 24th secretary of Defense.
A department spokesman said Hagel had maintained two phones for personal and work business while at the Pentagon.
“He understood the need to keep the two separate and to keep government business on his official e-mail," the spokesman said. "On some limited occasions, an email may have been sent to or from the wrong account.”
The White House declined to comment to the television station.
The line between the personal and government email addresses of cabinet secretaries has been under scrutiny after the revelation that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had used her personal account for all of her official business.
She said Tuesday that she had made that choice out of convenience. Her team has turned 30,490 emails over to the State Department and erased the remaining 31,830 emails.
When cabinet secretaries use their personal emails accounts instead of the ones issued to them by their agencies, their messages may not be automatically archived under public records laws.
