The Friday trip comes amid Carter’s admission this week that he used a personal, unsecured email account for some official business during his initial months at the Pentagon, which he has called a “mistake”, saying he “should have known better”.
Advertisement
In an interview with CBS, Carter however insisted that none of the communication was based on sensitive or classified content. He further said the communication that he made using personal email was immediately backed up for departmental record and to avoid any controversy in future.
“He does have a personal email account that he uses to correspond primarily with friends and family”.
Carter says he never emailed about classified information.
16, said Carter used a personal email account to do some of his government business during his first months at the Pentagon. “He indicated that he didn’t frequently use personal email for government work”.
Hackers have probed the email accounts of US officials for vulnerabilities, and Iranian hackers recently broke into the social media and email accounts of State Department officials, according to another Times report. “He is confident that his work-related email has been and will continue to be preserved within the federal records system”, he said. There was no prohibition at the State Department on the exclusive use of a private server, although the practice was highly unusual.
Almost all senior administration officials have personal email accounts that they occasionally use to communicate about work.
In one of the emails obtained by The Times, Carter discussed how he had mistakenly placed a notecard in a “burn bag”. Such bags are typically used to destroy classified documents.
Defence Secretary Ash Carter told his Afghan counterpart Friday that the United States is “with you”, committed to supporting Afghan security forces and building their capabilities for years to come.
In a report to the U.S. Congress released this week, the Pentagon painted a grim picture of the security situation in Afghanistan, finding that from the beginning of the year to mid-November, there were 27 percent more high-profile attacks in the capital city of Kabul compared with the same period last year. Cook declined to say whether it was a violation of Pentagon email policies.
Carter was assigned a government email account when he became defense secretary in February but continued to use the private account. “I think it’s obviously a mistake, but to his credit, he owned up to it. He took full responsibility for it. And most importantly, actually, he’s taken the steps that are necessary to rectify it”, Earnest said.
Advertisement
This violates Defense Department rules, in place since 2012, about using personal email for government business.
