Amb. Chris Hill on State Dept. Emails: ‘I Always Found it Better Just To Try the Telephone’

HILL: “I can’t speak to the secretary. When I did talk to her, I usually did it by telephone rather than email. Any official in the State Department has issued a State Department email. The State Department email is in two forms. You have regular unclassified email  where you can talk to someone from the outside and then you have an inter-email system where you are discussing confidential type of material. So normally you have these two e-mails and then you probably have your own private e-mail where you’re booking vacation or something like that. Everyone has a private e-mail as well. It does become a little tricky sometimes to manage all three of these e-mail accounts, but that’s normally what people do.”
MITCHELL: “But isn’t it unusual to have only a private e-mail system?”
HILL: “Well, everybody is issued an official email so I’m not in a position to comment on what happens with the Secretary of State. But it never occurred to me to try to get in touch with her by email because I figured there would be at least 20 people saying, was this email necessary, etc., so I always found it better to just try the telephone."