WIKILEAKS - Re: HRC and the email flap - There Is Just No Good Answer [Ann Marie Slaughter] - "Honestly, OTR, EVERYONE I knew at State used our private email"

https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/32612

Re: HRC and the email flap

From:pir@hrcoffice.com
To: cheryl.mills@gmail.com, john.podesta@gmail.com, jennifer.m.palmieri@gmail.com, kristinakschake@gmail.com
Date: 2015-03-07 16:01

Subject: Re: HRC and the email flap

There
Is
Just
No
Good
Answer

We need to gut through the process phase, get them all out there and let the content do the talking.

From: Cheryl Mills
Sent: Saturday, March 7, 2015 12:57 PM
To: Philippe Reines; John Podesta; Jennifer Palmieri; Kristina Schake
Subject: Fwd: HRC and the email flap

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Anne-Marie Slaughter > Date: Sat, Mar 7, 2015 at 11:11 AM

Subject: Fwd: HRC and the email flap

To: Nick Merrill >, Jake Sullivan >, Cheryl Mills >

fyi from Tom F — not great, but useful to know. I’m thinking about writing an op-ed myself from the point of view of a former State Dept official.

Begin forwarded message:

Anne-Marie, That doesn't sound unreasonable to me, but she needs to get out there and say it and explain it. I am sure she has a case to be made and right now it is her critics who are making it. Best wishes, Tom

On Sat, Mar 7, 2015 at 9:15 AM, Anne-Marie Slaughter > wrote:

Tom — just to follow up, didn’t you just move away from AOL a couple of years ago? Long after you knew you probably should have? Honestly, OTR, EVERYONE I knew at State used our private email (I used Princeton) when we were out of the office (except for our blackberries, which were State issued) because it was so incredibly clunky and difficult to get onto the State system when we were not in the office (it was a complicated set of steps and the system always froze or crashed). We sent sensitive but unclassified documents to our private emails so we could work on them at home and then sent them back to our work emails. Moreover, the overall lesson that everyone had taken away from the Clinton administration was not to put ANYTHING politically sensitive on email period, regardless of the system. I remember getting called on that early on — someone assumed I was putting something in email so that if it came out in the press later I would look good — a consideration that had simply never occurred to me. What seems most unfair about this is that she was working round the clock to master a completely new job and set of issues; the State Dept systems were a mess; she switched from campaign to home and then stuck with that for four years.

Best,
AM

On Mar 7, 2015, at 9:05 AM, Friedman Thomas > wrote:

Dear Anne-Marie, Thanks for your note. Always happy to hear your perspective. That all seems true to me, and yet… Even I evolved. I moved to gmail, got a Mac laptop, got rid of AOL. And I am not the Secretary of State, bound by very clear government regulations. I have to say I am troubled by what I have read about what Hillary did. I am keeping an open until I hear what she has to say, but it doesn't sit right with me. Just to let you know where I stand. Thanks for reaching out. Allbest, Tom

On Sat, Mar 7, 2015 at 8:48 AM, Anne-Marie Slaughter > wrote:

Tom,
I’m not working directly with Hillary’s folks; I can’t, given my position as head of New America. So this reach-out is on my own initiative. As I read all these columns about her email, I just keep remembering two things from you and about you that seem very relevant. Your point: "When I sat down to write The World is Flat: Facebook didn't exist, Twitter was still a sound, the cloud was still in the sky, 4G was a parking place, LinkedIn was a prison, applications were what you sent to college, and Skype was a typo” is still the best thing I know capturing how fast our world is changing. You were talking about 2004, a decade ago; now we are talking about 2008, 6 years ago — all of this “she should have known, she must have known” is ridiculous. In 2008 it was hard for the President to get a blackberry; State Department technology was terrible (it still is); we hadn’t had any major data breaches, private (Target etc) or public (Wikileaks; Snowden). The other thing I keep remembering is how you were still using an AOL account until very recently. Even as sophisticated a tech guru as you just sticks with what you know amid the constant pressures of a busy life. We all know there is a better system out there; we should switch, but it’s such a pain and we don’t have time ….

Just some reflections. But both seem very relevant to putting all this in some perspective.

All best, AM