New Hillary Clinton emails show Colin Powell did advise her on avoiding public scrutiny

Madeline Albright, Colin Powell, and Hillary Clinton in 2014
(Image credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

On Jan. 23, 2009, two days after Hillary Clinton was sworn in as secretary of state, one of her predecessors, Colin Powell, emailed with some advice on what to do about her BlackBerry. Powell's advice was summarized in an FBI report on its July interview with Clinton about her use of a private email server, and Democrats on the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee released the entire exchange Wednesday night.

"I didn't have a BlackBerry," Powell wrote. "What I did do was have a personal computer that was hooked up to a private phone line (sounds ancient.) So I could communicate with a wide range of friends directly without it going through the State Department servers. I even used it to do business with some foreign leaders and some of the senior folks in the Department on their personal email accounts." Powell said he used an "ancient version of a PDA," or early smartphone, despite "all sorts of nonsense" from the NSA/CIA about "about how they gave out signals and could be read by spies, etc." He continued:

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Peter Weber, The Week US

Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.