Hillary Clinton couldn’t use a computer to send or read her email in 2009, when she became secretary at the State Department, according to emails released Monday that suggest she was a technological novice in the country’s top diplomatic post.
Lewis Lukens, a former top administrative assistant for Mrs. Clinton, detailed her lack of knowledge in an email among Mrs. Clinton’s staffers, trying to figure out how “HRC,” as they referred to her, could read encrypted email when she only knew how to send and receive messages on a Blackberry device — and didn’t yet have access to an encrypted one.
“I talked to cheryl about this. She says problem is hrc does not know how to use a computer to do email — only bb,” Mr. Lukens said in a Jan. 24, 2009, message released Monday by Judicial Watch, a conservative public interest law firm that has fought to secure the release of documents surrounding Mrs. Clinton’s strange email circumstances.
Mr. Lukens insisted he could get Mrs. Clinton “up to speed” with a little training, and suggested putting a stand-alone computer in her office so she could check email without being connected to the State Department’s network.
Mrs. Clinton had just assumed office as secretary and the messages appear to be trying to sort out her early technology problems.
She has said that at that time, she was still using the email account she’d used during her eight years as a senator, conducting official State Department business on that account. She says she no longer has access to that account and so those messages are lost.
Mrs. Clinton refused a State Department email account, instead setting up an account tied to an email server she kept at her home in New York. That arrangement had the effect of illegally shielding her communications from scrutiny by the public and Congress for nearly six years.
She finally returned some 32,000 government-related emails to the State Department in December 2014, or nearly two years after she’d left office.
Those messages are now being released under a court order — though a high percentage of them have been deemed to contain classified information, raising questions about whether she properly handled classified information.
She said this weekend that she took classification seriously, and wants all of her messages released — including those her own former department says are too secret to be seen by the public — in order to prove the information isn’t sensitive.
The new emails released by Judicial Watch on Monday showed Mrs. Clinton was interested in trying to get an encrypted handheld device similar to the one President Obama was using.
“These emails are shocking. They show the Obama State Department’s plan to set up non-government computers and a computer network for Hillary Clinton to bypass the State Department network,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said. “That these records were withheld from the American people until now is scandalous and shows the criminal probe of Hillary Clinton’s email system should include current and former officials of the Obama administration.”
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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