TEL AVIV – In perhaps one of the most ironic Hillary Clinton emails to be publicly released, Clinton expressed surprise that a State Department employee used a personal email account for work-related correspondence.
On Feb 27, 2011, Clinton was forwarded a message from a State Department employee named John Godfrey, described in an email from career Foreign Service Officer Alice Wells as “one of our most knowledgeable officers on Libya.”
Wells had forwarded Godfrey’s analysis to top Clinton deputy Jake Sullivan, who sent the correspondence directly to Clinton.
“Who does he work for now?” Clinton replied.
“Us,” Sullivan responded.
Clinton then answered, “Is he in NEA currently? Or was he in Embassy? I was surprised that he used personal email account if he is at State.”
The dispatch was contained in Monday’s batch of roughly 3,900 pages said to be the last of Clinton’s work-related emails. The messages were reviewed in full by this reporter.
Like scores of other emails released on Monday, this particular message was also contained in a batch of 3,000 pages released in January.
At the time, the message received some major news media attention, although quite a few of the more significant news media outlets covering the exchange only mentioned Clinton’s comments briefly despite the importance of the email, which clearly shows that Clinton knew it was problematic to use a private email system.
The email was noticed in January by the New York Post, which ran with the headline, “Hillary Clinton knew using private e-mail could be a problem.” The Post dedicated an entire article to the subject.
The newspaper utilized the email from Godfrey and Clinton’s response to report, “Clinton raised questions five years ago when a State Department employee’s note about developments in Libya was relayed to her from his private email account.”
CBS News in January briefly referenced the Godfrey correspondence in the 11th paragraph of an article on another subject, titled, “In email, Hillary Clinton tells aide to send talking points ‘nonsecure.’ ”
NBC News mentioned the email in one sentence in the 9th paragraph of a larger piece titled, “Clinton’s Emails Give Glimpse Into a Candidate Often Under Pressure.”
New York Magazine reported on the Godfrey email exchange in the 7th paragraph of a larger article, dedicating one small paragraph to the subject.
The New York Times cited Clinton’s reaction to Godfrey’s use of a private email in a piece titled, “New Clinton Emails Show Mixed Concerns on Security of Information.” The Times referenced the email in the 5th paragraph, but did deal with the larger theme of Clinton and email security.
The Times further reported:
In January 2010, she admonished two officials not to forward a message she had just sent them, and to “delete after reading” because she had failed to remove the email addresses of the original senders.
USA Today reported on the email after the January release, running an entire piece on the subject. Their article was titled, “Clinton expressed surprise at State employee’s personal email account.”
ABC News also dedicated a full online article to the subject.
And Politico included the email in an article titled, “The 23 must-read emails from Clinton’s inbox.” The email in question came in at number twenty on Politico’s list.
Aaron Klein is Breitbart’s Jerusalem bureau chief and senior investigative reporter. He is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the popular weekend talk radio program, “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio.” Follow him on Twitter @AaronKleinShow. Follow him on Facebook.