Former Secretary of State Colin Powell sent Hillary Clinton a detailed email in 2009 on how he bypassed the State Department's security measures while using his own personal computer and cautioned his incoming successor to "be very careful."
"I got around it all by not saying much and not using systems that captured the data," Powell, who served under George W. Bush, wrote in the email that was released Wednesday by Maryland Democrat Rep. Elijah Cummings.
Cummings is the ranking Democrat on the special House committee investigating the 2012 Benghazi attacks that killed for Americans.
The email, which was sent to Clinton's private Blackberry address, was dated Jan. 23, 2009. The Democrat was seeking Powell's advice on using Blackberrys on the job.
The New York Times reported last month that Clinton told the FBI in her confidential interview with the agency during the July Fourth weekend that Powell had advised her to use a personal email account.
The FBI questioned Clinton about the 2009 email from Powell during her three-and-a-half hour interview at her home in Washington, the Times reports.
Powell retorted that Clinton was trying to blame him for her problems with the private account.
"Her people have been trying to pin it on me," Powell told People magazine. "The truth is, she was using [the private email server] for a year before I sent her a memo telling her what I did."
The date of the email was listed in the notes the FBI released on Friday regarding its interview with the former secretary of state.
Cummings said in a statement that he released the full email to show that "Secretary Powell advised Secretary Clinton with a detailed blueprint on how to skirt security rules and bypass requirements to preserve federal records, although Secretary Clinton has made clear that she did not rely on this advice.
"This email exchange also illustrates the longstanding problem that no Secretary of State ever used an official unclassified email account until the current Secretary of State."
In the email, Powell said that he did not use a Blackberry.
"What I did do was have a personal computer that was hooked up to a private phone line (sounds ancient)," Powell wrote. "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. I did the same thing on the road in hotels," he said.
Powell discussed using his cell phone within the Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities (SCIF), which are enclosed room where classified information was processed, but where mobile devices were not allowed.
He said that he was not pleased with the explanations intelligence officials gave for not allowing the devices in the area.
"When I asked why not they gave me all kinds of nonsense about how they gave out signals and could be read by spies, etc.," he said. "Same reason they tried to keep mobile phones out of the suite. I had numerous meetings with them. We even opened one up for them to try to explain to me why it was more dangerous than say, a remote control for one of the many TVs in the suite. Or something embedded in my shoe heel.
"So, we just went about our business and stopped asking," Powell told Clinton. "I had an ancient version of a PDA and used it. In general, the suite was so sealed that it is hard to get signals in or out wirelessly."
However, Powell warned Clinton of "a real danger" in using a Blackberry.
"If it is public that you have a Blackberry and it [is] government and you are using it, government or not, to do business, it may become an official record and subject to the law," he said.
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