WORKAROUND

Hillary Wanted Secure Phone for Emails

Before setting up private account.

Newly released documents show that then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asked for a secure government smartphone in February 2009, before she began sending private emails accessed through, in part, her BlackBerry. Her request was denied by the National Security Agency. President Obama has the kind of device Clinton was requesting. The Democratic presidential frontrunner has been under scrutiny ever since the public learned that she used a private email server to route many messages, some of which contained classified information. The State Department’s then-assistant director for security infrastructure, Donald R. Reid, wrote: “We began examining options for [Secretary Clinton] with respect to secure ‘BlackBerry-like’ communications. The current state of the art is not too user-friendly, has no infrastructure at State, and is very expensive.” Reid said that each time they asked the NSA what solution they had worked up to provide a mobile device to Obama, “we were politely told to shut up.”