Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

Hillary Clinton Responds To E-Mail Controversy

Aired March 10, 2015 - 15:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON, FORMER U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE: The president and his team are in the midst of intense negotiations. Their goal is a diplomatic solution that would close off Iran's pathways to a nuclear bomb and give us unprecedented access and insight into Iran's nuclear program.

Now, reasonable people can disagree about what exactly it will take to accomplish this objective, and we all must judge any final agreement on its merits. But the recent letter from Republican senators was out of step with the best traditions of American leadership. And one has to ask, what was the purpose of this letter?

There appear to be two logical answers. Either these senators were trying to be helpful to the Iranians or harmful to the commander in chief in the midst of high-stakes international diplomacy. Either answer does discredit to the letter's signatories.

Now, I would be pleased to talk more about this important matter, but I know there have been questions about my e-mails, so I want to address that directly. And then I will take a few questions from you.

There are four things I want the public to know.

First, when I got to work as secretary of state, I opted for convenience to use my personal e-mail account, which was allowed by the State Department, because I thought it would be easier to carry just one device for my work and for my personal e-mails, instead of two.

Looking back, it would have been better if I had simply used a second e-mail account and carried a second phone. But, at the time, this didn't seem like an issue.

Second, the vast majority of my work e-mails went to government employees at their government addresses, which meant they were captured and preserved immediately on the system at the State Department.

Third, after I left office, the State Department asked former secretaries of state for our assistance in providing copies of work- related e-mails from our personal accounts. I responded right away and provided all my e-mails that could possibly be work-related, which totaled roughly 55,000 printed pages, even though I knew that the State Department already had the vast majority of them. We went through a thorough process to identify all of my work-related

e-mails and deliver them to the State Department. At the end, I chose not to keep my private personal e-mails, e-mails about planning Chelsea's wedding or my mother's funeral arrangements, condolence notes to friends, as well as yoga routines, family vacations, the other things you typically find in in-boxes.

No one wants their personal e-mails made public, and I think most people understand that and respect that privacy.

Fourth, I took the unprecedented step of asking that the State Department make all my work-related e-mails public for everyone to see. I am very proud of the work that I and my colleagues and our public servants at the department did during my four years as secretary of state.

And I look forward to people being able to see that for themselves.

Again, looking back, it would have been better for me to use two separate phones and two e-mail accounts. I thought using one device would be simpler. And, obviously, it hasn't worked out that way.

Now I'm happy to take a few questions.

QUESTION: Secretary Clinton...

(CROSSTALK)

CLINTON: Just a minute. Nick is calling on people.

QUESTION: Sorry.

Madam Secretary, Kahraman Haliscelik, Turkish television. On behalf of the U.N. Correspondents Association, thank you very much for your remarks. And it's wonderful to see you here again.

Madam Secretary, why did you opt out not using two devices at the time? Obviously, if this didn't come out, you wouldn't -- probably, it wouldn't become an issue. And my second follow-up question is, if you were a man today, would all this fuss being made be made?

Thank you.

CLINTON: Well, I will leave that to others to answer.

But, as I said, I saw it as a matter of convenience, and it was allowed. Others had done it, according to the State Department, which recently said Secretary Kerry was the first secretary of state to rely primarily on a state.gov e-mail account.

And when I got there, I wanted to just use one device for both personal and work e-mails, instead of two. It was allowed. And, as I said, it was for convenience. And it was my practice to communicate with State Department and other government officials on their .gov accounts. So those e-mails would be automatically saved in the State Department system to meet record-keeping requirements. And that, indeed, is what happened.

And I heard just a little while ago the State Department announced they would begin to post some of my e-mails, which I'm very glad to hear, because I want it all out there.

(CROSSTALK)

CLINTON: Andrea? Andrea? Thank you, Andrea.

QUESTION: Thank you, Madam Secretary.

Can you explain how you decided which of the personal e-mails to get rid of, how you got rid of them and when, and how you will respond to questions about you being the arbiter of what you release? And, secondly, could you answer the questions that have been raised about foreign contributions from Middle Eastern countries like Saudi Arabia that abuse women or permit violence against women to the family foundation and whether that disturbs you, as you are rightly celebrating 20 years of leadership on this issue?

CLINTON: Well, those are two very different questions. Let me see if I can take them in order.

I will give you some of the background. In going through the e-mails, there were over 60,000 in total sent and received. About half were work-related and went to the State Department. And about half were personal that were not in any way related to my work. I had no reason to save them, but that was my decision, because the federal guidelines are clear, and the State Department request was clear.

For any government employee, it is that government employee's responsibility to determine what's personal and what's work-related. I am very confident of the process that we conducted and the e-mails that were produced. And I feel like, once the American public begins to see the e-mails, they will have an unprecedented insight into a high-government official's daily communications, which I think will be quite interesting.

With respect to the foundation, I'm very proud of the work the foundation does. I'm very proud of the hundreds of thousands of people who support the work of the foundation and the results that have been achieved for people here at home and around the world.

And I think that we are very clear about where we stand, certainly where I stand, on all of these issues. There can't be any mistake about my passion concerning women's rights here at home and around the world. So I think that people who want to support the foundation know full well what it is we stand for and what we're working on.

(CROSSTALK)

CLINTON: Hi, right here. She's sort of squashed, so you got to...

QUESTION: Hi, Secretary.

CLINTON: Hi. QUESTION: I was wondering if you think that you made a mistake either in exclusively using your private e-mail or in the response to the controversy around it? And, if so, what have you learned from that?

CLINTON: Well, I have to tell you that, as I said in my remarks, looking back, it would have been probably, you know, smarter to have used two devices.

But I have absolute confidence that everything that could be in any way connected to work is now in the possession of the State Department. And I have to add, even if I had two devices, which is obviously permitted, many people do that, you would still have to put the responsibility where it belongs, which is on the official.

So I did it for convenience. And I now, looking back, think that it might have been smarter to have those two devices from the very beginning.

(CROSSTALK)

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Did you or any of your aides delete any government-related e-mails from your personal account? And what lengths are you willing to go to, to prove that you didn't? Some people, including supporters of yours, have suggested having an independent arbiter look at your server, for instance.

CLINTON: We did not.

In fact, my direction to conduct the thorough investigation was to err on the side of providing anything that could be possibly viewed as work-related. That doesn't mean they will be by the State Department once the State Department goes through them.

But, out of an abundance of caution and care, we wanted to send that message unequivocally. That is the responsibility of the individual. And I have fulfilled that responsibility. And I have no doubt that we have done exactly what we should have done.

When the search was conducted, we were asking that any e-mail be identified and preserved that could potentially be federal records. And that's exactly what we did. And we went, as I said, beyond that, and the process produced over 30,000 work e-mails.

And I think that we have more than met the request from the State Department. The server contains personal communications from my husband and me. And I believe I have met all of my responsibilities. And the server will remain private, and I think that the State Department will be able over time to release all of the records that were provided.

(CROSSTALK)

CLINTON: Right there.

QUESTION: Madam Secretary, two quick follow-ups. You mentioned the server. That's one of the distinctions here. This

wasn't Gmail or Yahoo! or something. This was a server that you owned. Is that appropriate? Is it -- was there any precedent for it? Did you clear it with any State Department security officials? And do they have full -- did they have full access to it when you were secretary?

And then, separately, will any of this have any bearing or fact on your timing or decision about whether or not you run for president? Thank you.

CLINTON: Well, the system we used was set up for President Clinton's office. And it had numerous safeguards.

It was on property, guarded by the Secret Service. And there were no security breaches. So I think that the use of that server, which started with my husband, certainly proved to be effective and secure.

Now, with respect to any sort of future -- future issues, look, I trust the American people to make their decisions about political and public matters. And I feel that I have taken unprecedented steps to provide these work-related e-mails. They're going to be in the public domain. And I think that Americans will find that interesting. And I look forward to having a discussion about that.

QUESTION: Madam Secretary...

CLINTON: Hi.

QUESTION: ... how could the public be assured that when you deleted e-mails that were personal in nature that you didn't also delete e- mails that were professional, but possibly unflattering? And what do you think about this Republican idea of having an independent third party come in and examine your e-mails?

CLINTON: Well, first of all, you would have to ask that question to every single federal employee, because, the way the system works, the federal employee, the individual, whether they have one device, two devices, three devices, how many addresses, they make the decision.

So, even if you have a work-related device with a work-related .gov account, you choose what goes on that. That's the way our system works. And so we trust and count on the judgment of thousands, maybe millions of people to make those decisions.

And I feel that I did that and even more, that I went above and beyond what I was requested to do. And, again, those will be out in the public domain and people will be able to judge for themselves.

QUESTION: Madam Secretary -- Madam Secretary -- excuse me.

Madam Secretary, State Department rules at the time you were secretary were perfectly clear that if a State Department employee was going to be using private e-mail, that employee needed to turn those e-mails over to the State Department to be preserved on government computers. Why did you not do that? Why did you not go along with State Department rules until nearly two years after you left office?

And, also, the president of the United States said that he was unaware you had this unusual e-mail arrangement. The White House Counsel's Office says that you never approved this arrangement through them. Why did you not do that? Why did you -- and why have you apparently caught the White House by surprise?

And just one last political question, if I might. Does all of this make -- affect your decision in any way on whether or not to run for president?

CLINTON: Well, let me try to unpack your multiple questions.

First, the laws and regulations in effect when I was secretary of state allowed me to use my e-mail for work. That is undisputed. Secondly, under the Federal Records Act, records are defined as recorded information, regardless of its form or characteristics.

And in meeting the record-keeping obligations, it was my practice to e-mail government officials on their State or other .gov accounts, so that the e-mails were immediately captured and preserved.

Now, there are different rules governing the White House than there are governing the rest of the executive branch. And in order to address the requirements I was under, I did exactly what I have said. I e-mailed two people and I not only knew, I expected that then to be captured in the State Department or any other government agency that I was e-mailing to at a .gov account.

What happened in starting, I guess, late summer, early fall is that the State Department sent a letter to former secretaries of state, not just to me, asking for some assistance in providing any work-related e-mails that might be on the personal e-mail.

And what I did was to direct, you know, my counsel to conduct a thorough investigation and to err on the side of providing anything that could be connected to work. They did that. And that was my obligation. I fully fulfilled it and then I took the unprecedented step of saying, go ahead and release them and let people see them.

(CROSSTALK)

QUESTION: Why did you wait two months to turn those e-mails over?

QUESTION: Why did you delete the personal e-mails?

(CROSSTALK)

CLINTON: I would be happy to have someone talk to you about the rules. I fully complied with every rule that I was governed by.

QUESTION: Were you ever specifically briefed on the security implications of using your own e-mail server and using your personal address to e-mail with the president?

CLINTON: I did not e-mail any classified material to anyone on my e- mail. There is no classified material.

So, I'm certainly well aware of the classification requirements and did not send classified material.

QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE)

CLINTON: Because they were personal and private about matters that I believed were within the scope of my personal privacy, and that -- particularly of other people. They had nothing to do with work. But I didn't see any reason to keep them.

QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE)

CLINTON: At the end of the process.

QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE) who was forced to resign two years ago because of his personal use of e-mails. By the way, David Shuster from Al- Jazeera America.

(CROSSTALK)

QUESTION: What about Ambassador Scott Gration being forced to resign?

CLINTON: David, I think you should go online and read the entire I.G. report. That is not an accurate representation of what happened.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, all.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: All right.

So there you hear the secretary of state. She spent about 21 minutes there making a statement, then answering reporters' questions, insisting she did nothing wrong, she complied with all of the rules, going in detail on specific questions.

Jake Tapper, you were listening very, very carefully. She said there were about 60,000 e-mails over the course of those four years, half State Department-related, government-related, the other half personal, 30,000 -- 30,000. But she said, correct me if I'm wrong, the 30,000 personal e-mails, she basically deleted, and at the same time, she's saying the server on which all of those e-mails were included, that will remain private.

JAKE TAPPER, CNN CHIEF WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: She didn't really specify exactly what happened with these personal e-mails. She said she chose not to keep the personal e-mails. She also said that they're on her server.

So, I think it's a question as to whether or not they were deleted or whether she's just opting not to share them with anybody. She also said that she never at any time e-mailed any classified material. And she acknowledged that, in retrospect, she had wished she had taken two devices, one for personal e-mails, one for professional e-mails.

A lot of people out there noting that BlackBerrys and iPhones, smartphones these days can handle different accounts. What I heard from Jon Favreau, who worked at the White House during much of this time, is that the White House and presumably State Department computers, State Department mobile devices, smartphones did not have the capability of doing that. The government would not let you have private Gmail on your official government account until 2010 or 2011.

She also made a very passionate defense in favor of keeping her personal e-mails private, saying that they are about Chelsea's wedding in 2010, her mother's funeral in 2011, yoga routines.

And then when it came to questions about why she should be trusted to have been the arbiter of deciding what was personal and what was professional when she handed over these 55,000 pages of e-mails to the government, the ones that were, according to her, government-related, she said that's -- those are the rules. Every government employee, every federal government employee, thousands or millions of them, it is up to them to decide what was official and to turn it over and what was not official and to keep it.

BLITZER: But it's interesting. Right out of the gate, she came out and acknowledged, with hindsight, it would have been better, it would have been smarter for her to have kept a personal e-mail account and a government-related e-mail account. She wishes with hindsight she would have done that. She presumably wouldn't have this controversy right now if she had done that when she took office.

TAPPER: Yes. No, absolutely. And just for anybody wondering at home why she called on Turkish television first, I'm told that the United Nations, it's customary to have the president of the United Nations press core ask the first question. That individual was -- is not in the country and asked somebody else from the board of directors at the U.N. press corps to ask the question. And that is why that question was Turkish television was first.

BLITZER: It was a good question from Turkish television.

Gloria Borger, did she put this crisis, this political uproar to rest, or is it going to continue?

GLORIA BORGER, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: I think she detoxed it a little bit. We were talking about -- before about whether Hillary Clinton would just defend, defend, defend, as we have known the Clintons to do in the past, in the infamous '90s, as we were talking about.

I think what she did today was say, look, if I had it to do all over again, I probably wouldn't have done it this way. And she also made it clear that she had decided to either delete or not to release personal e-mails. I delete personal e-mails after I get them very often.

I think the questions that we really didn't get an answer to is why the server and how were these decisions made about which were personal and which were actually State Department decisions. She did say that she had counsel helping her decide, which I don't think is something we have heard before, helping her decide which things went to the State Department and which didn't. But in terms of whether she was going to hand this over to a third party, to the archives, to some neutral sort of arbiter here, we didn't hear any of that.

But, again, on the first point, she did say, you know what, if I had to do it all over again, I did this for convenience. That was her explanation. A lot of people won't buy that, Wolf. A lot of people won't buy that. But she said it was for convenience because she didn't want to use two devices, but clearly made it clear that, if she had to do it all over again, she wouldn't have done it.

BLITZER: Let me get David Gergen's reaction.

David, what do you think? How did she do?

DAVID GERGEN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: It was an extremely interesting press conference. You have to sort of admire her bravado, the way she went through it with a smile as if she was enjoying herself. And you know she hated every minute of it.

It was very much a trust-me press conference, that if you want to believe Hillary Clinton, if you really believe in what she does and what she represents, I think you would -- people -- millions of people are going to give her the benefit of the doubt, say, look, she -- basically, it's get off her back, she's done what she had to do.

There are a lot of other people who do not trust her. And they're going to read into this something, well, you pulled over another one. You gave over half your e-mails to the State Department, but you made the decision of what you were going to keep and then basically you got rid of them.

She chose not to keep. I don't know how you can interpret that as other than we deleted the other half, and you will never know what was in there, because, by the way, I'm also going to keep the server. She said, this is private. And she made it quite clear.

So, in terms of going to a third party, what is there to go to a third party about? Because half of them are gone and the other half are with the State Department. And they're going to -- they have announced today they will try to release them.

BLITZER: Let me ask if they really are gone.

Mark Rasch is still with us. He's a cyber-crimes expert, formerly serving with the Justice Department.

You heard what she said. Mark, do you think those 30,000, if in fact they were deleted, really are gone?

MARK RASCH, FOUNDER, RASCH TECHNOLOGY AND CYBERLAW: Well, it's possible if you had access to the actual hard drives that you could restore some or all of these.

And, of course, people are going to come up with different arguments. She said actually two different things. She said she chose not to keep personal e-mails, which makes me think that they were deleted. But she also said the server contains personal communications that will remain private. Those are two inconsistent things. We don't know whether she deleted

them or whether they're there and she's just not going to turn them over. But assuming that she deleted them and she deleted them several years ago, those could have been overwritten and may or may not be able to be retrieved depending on how much time and energy and access you have.

BLITZER: Let me get Margaret Hoover's reaction, our political commentator.

How did she do, Margaret?

MARGARET HOOVER, CNN POLITICAL CONTRIBUTOR: Look, I'm really sympathetic to the argument that this was for convenience. Like, I just didn't want to carry three devices around. It's really difficult. I just kept it all in one. Maybe I made a bad decision.

Truly, I actually am sympathetic to that. But the fundamental question and what she said about government employees, every single government employee has to decide what is state business and what is personal and private.

That is fundamentally not true, Wolf. I have been a government employee for the federal government. Many of us who are commentators at CNN have. When we're a federal government employee, we're forced to use a .gov e-mail account so that all of those records are in the hands of the federal government and then can be FOIA-requested or available to the public at any given moment should they be sought.

She is fundamentally not in that position because she owns the server. Government employees don't have private servers in their homes and then become the sole arbiters of what is relevant to the public or not. That's the crux of the problem here, and I don't think that she answered that.

TAPPER: Let's go to Capitol Hill right now and our chief Capitol Hill correspondent, Dana Bash, who's hearing from some other kinds of federal employees, members of the House and Senate, getting response from Democrats and Republicans.

Dana, how were Secretary Clinton's remarks received up there?

DANA BASH, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Actually, Jake, I'm in Miami because I have been doing some reporting on the sort of upcoming Jeb Bush campaign.

And what I have been hearing from some sources close to him, as we have been sort of e-mailing and texting, watching this press conference unfold, was kind of the kind of questions that you were asking about whether her personal e-mails were deleted or not, which appears to be clear as mud, because that seems to be the big thing that Republicans are seizing on.

Yes, she separated the personal from the private, she says. She did it with counsel and so forth. But are they gone? Are they gone forever? We don't know the answer to that at this point. Now, I should say, to be fair, Jeb Bush did virtually the same thing

with his e-mails from his days as governor. He released 275,000 of them online recently, in the past couple months. But they were about his official business. He didn't also release his e-mails about -- I'm guessing it wasn't yoga, but maybe it was, or his golf game or about his children and so forth, the way that Hillary Clinton was referring to.

Those are still real questions. The other skepticism that I'm getting is the national security one. She said very -- at the very end there, she was finally asked about whether or not she e-mailed anything that was classified. She said absolutely not.

The question, the skeptical question is, how can we be sure of that? And then, by the way, the second question is, even if it wasn't classified, given the hacking that we know has been going on with even the U.S. government says North Korea as the culprit, how do we know that because she wasn't using something secure that even those e-mails weren't compromised?

TAPPER: So, there you have it, Hilary Rosen. You have a response from Dana Bash, channeling people in the Jeb Bush campaign, erstwhile campaign, talking about all the questions that remain unanswered.

I suppose we now know that this issue isn't necessarily going away. How do you think Secretary Clinton did in acquitting herself, regardless of the fact that Republicans are obviously going to keep talking about this?

HILARY ROSEN, CNN POLITICAL CONTRIBUTOR: You know, I started out earlier this afternoon saying that I thought that she needed to pass a reasonable test. And I think she passed a reasonable test, that her description of not wanting to carry two devices, you know, in retrospect, it was a bad idea, was authentic and forthright, and the fact that she sent over the vast majority of her e-mails to people who actually had state.gov addresses, so the State Department has them, and those that they didn't have, they now have.