Carter (Ash Carter) served as the Deputy Secretary of Defense from October 2011 to December 2013. President Barack Obama recently called it a mistake but said the issue had been”ginned up” by the campaign season.
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“He has an individual email account that he uses to relate essentially with loved ones”.
Thanks to a Freedom of Information Act request, the New York Times obtained emails from Carter’s first few months on the job that show him discussing topics like speeches, meetings, and news media appearances via personal email, though he had a government account. The daily paper said it has acquired duplicates of Carter’s messages.
According to the daily, it is not known when Carter stopped using his personal account for business but according to an administration official, the defense chief continued to use it even after Hillary Clinton’s email scandal became public in March.
They have claimed that the organization has not took care of government data with consideration. Mrs. Clinton has said she didn’t knowingly share classified information.
Carter, speaking from an American base in Erbil, northern Iraq, told CBS that he never sent anything classified from his personal account but did occasionally send “administrative” emails to his “immediate staff” from his iPhone.
No evidence of wrongdoing has come to light in her case, and her use of a private server did not break State Department rules.
The use of personal email has dogged Democratic presidential front-runner Clinton since February and prompted an FBI investigation.
The Pentagon issued a statement saying Carter has done nothing wrong.
“He does have a personal email account that he uses to correspond primarily with friends and family. He is confident that his work-related email has been and will continue to be preserved within the federal records system”, said Cook. The greater political problem for Clinton is it raises questions about how she selected the emails she turned over and what was in the ones she deleted.
“He takes his responsibilities with regard to classified material very seriously”, the spokesman added.
Carter’s press secretary told the Times that Carter believes this was a mistake and has since stopped.
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Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook said in a statement that Carter had acknowledged that it was wrong to use personal email.
