Eight days before Hillary Clinton took office as Secretary of State in January 2009, an aide to former President Bill Clinton quietly registered a new Internet address for the couple. That trivial but deliberate online purchase is the earliest known hint of the private e-mail system that now plagues the presumptive Democratic nominee’s presidential campaign.
New insights
Buried in a footnote in a government watchdog’s report released on Wednesday, the reference to the registration of clintonemail.com was an early step toward building what became the private homebrew e-mail system that has attracted an FBI investigation and raised questions about Ms. Clinton’s judgment while serving as the nation’s top diplomat.
The State Department inspector general’s release of the 83-page report provides new insights into the server — who knew about it, its vulnerabilities and the bureaucratic mismanagement that allowed the secret system to operate outside normal channels throughout Ms. Clinton’s tenure.
The findings more than a year in the making also show how the use of private e-mails by Ms. Clinton and other top aides caused internal headaches for the few State Department officials who knew of its existence and for an agency that has long struggled to comply with federal cyber-security and record-keeping requirements.
Over time, through media accounts and now details in the inspector general’s report, a clearer picture has emerged of Ms. Clinton’s e-mail system and its use. But it is still not clear how well her system was secured at the time.
