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Hillary Clinton at UN
Hillary Clinton speaks to the reporters at the UN on Tuesday. Photograph: Seth Wenig/AP
Hillary Clinton speaks to the reporters at the UN on Tuesday. Photograph: Seth Wenig/AP

Four things we still don't know after Clinton's email press conference

This article is more than 9 years old

Did she delete half the emails or not? Why did she contradict Bill? The press conference meant to clarify the controversy ended up adding more questions

Hillary Clinton’s mea culpa at the United Nations on Tuesday was supposed to tamp down the scandal over her use of a private email address as secretary of state. But Clinton ended up leaving more questions than answers.

1. Does Hillary email with Bill or not?

Someone’s not telling the truth. Hillary Clinton said on Tuesday: “The server contains personal communications from my husband and me … The server will remain private.”

Earlier in the day, ironically enough, the Wall Street Journal published a quote from Bill Clinton’s spokesman saying that Bill does not currently use email and has only sent two emails in his life – and that they were both sent while he was president ... which was 15 years ago.

2. How secure was the ClintonEmail.com server?

Clinton stated flatly that “there were no security breaches” on her email server at the press conference. As journalist Dan Murphy asked: “How could she possibly know that?”

There were likely dozens of foreign intelligence agencies who would have loved to get their hands on Clinton’s emails when she was secretary of state, many of which have sophisticated hacking teams that could have attacked the server without her knowing. (Remember that Gemalto, a leading security company with hundreds of employees, did not detect a hack by the GCHQ and NSA.)

(Update: Clinton’s team has offered a vague followup on this, stating the obvious – she talked to foreign officials in person, on the phone and “through correspondence”, while clarifying only that “[t]he review of all of her emails revealed only one email with a foreign [UK] official.” The followup statement from her office also said “there is no evidence there was ever a breach”.)

Also: what type of security professionals were looking after the server? Clinton said the secret service guarded it, but we have no idea the expertise of the person actually running it. Experts have already pointed to basic holes in the email server’s security based on public data, and as any systems administrator will tell you, running your own email server is never simple.

3. How can Clinton believe she didn’t violate any rules?

Clinton also said at the press conference she “fully complied with every rule I was governed by”. Well, actually: a 2005 State Department directive said “It is the Department’s general policy that normal day-to-day operations be conducted on an authorized [Automated Information System], which has the proper level of security control to provide nonrepudiation, authentication and encryption, to ensure confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the resident information.”

Sources told Politico the rules were “clear-cut”. An ambassador was harshly criticized in 2012 for breaking this rule in the same manner Clinton did and subsequently fired in part for using a private email account at work. And Clinton herself signed a State Department cable in 2011 saying that all ambassadors should avoid personal email for professional business.

4. Did Clinton delete a whole bunch of emails or not?

At one point in the press conference, Clinton said about half of the 60,000 emails on her server were private, and she insinuated that they had been deleted, saying “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.”

“I chose not to keep my private personal emails,” she said. But it’s unclear whether this meant meant she chose not to keep those in the pile her team handed to the State Department … or just deleted them from existence.

Then, Clinton said she won’t hand over the email server because: “The server contains personal communications from my husband and me and I believe I have met all of my responsibilities. The server will remain private.”

So which is it?

Update: In a statement after the press conference, Clinton’s office said

Her email account contained a total of 62,320 sent and received emails from March 2009 to February 2013. Based on the review process described below, 30,490 of these emails were provided to the Department, and the remaining 31,830 were private, personal records.

Which still raises as lot of questions.

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