A former ambassador who was forced to resign his job under Hillary Clinton's watch for several reasons, including using a private email account, says that a double standard came into play that has destroyed what was for him a "dream job."
"As I was going through it, I did not perceive that it was a double standard because I did not know of Secretary Clinton's use of a commercial e-mail account," Scott Gration, the former ambassador to Kenya, told CNN's
"State of the Union" Sunday. "But as I've reflected on it in the last couple of days, it does appear like there was a different standard that was used in my case and that has been used in hers."
Gration stepped down following a
damaging 2012 report from the state department's Inspector General that outlined several complaints about Gration's service, not only the email issue. The report noted there were "several concerns with management and leadership" under Gration's watch, and that he had "lost the respect and confidence of the staff to lead the mission" and that he had "damaged the cohesion of Embassy Nairobi's country team."
According to the report,
Gration distributed a self-written policy that permitted him and his staff to use private email for official business, and that he worked from a bathroom which had an unsecured network, with staffers sitting on toilets for meetings.
The former ambassador told CNN Sunday that when it comes to the email issue, he did comply with using the "open net at work and at my residence, but at the same time I questioned some of the policy and tried to get some of it changed."
Gration continued Sunday that he "wasn't being in noncompliance, but I did raise some serious questions about the use of commercial accounts because I thought that they were helpful to me in the course of my duties as the ambassador to Kenya."
He also said the would presume that then-State Department Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills, one of those behind the push to get Gration out of the ambassador's seat, would have known that Clinton herself was using a private email account for her official correspondence.
"Secretary Clinton and Cheryl Mills were in very close dialogue on all issues, and I know that in my view that she would have known that Secretary Clinton was not using the open net," said Gration. "So I do find it sort of unusual that she stated this was one of the reasons why I had to move on, and as I look back, it seems a bit unfair."
The end of the ambassadorship has also ended Gration's public career, which came after service in the Air Force that included flying some 274 combat missions in Iraq, and he said that the report against him ended what was a "dream job."
"It was a job where I felt I was making a significant difference in light of America's interests, what we were trying to do here, to protect Americans," said Gration. "To have that terminated over some allegations that were in the end proven to be false, and I was exonerated...these claims were dismissed. To see this dream job of mine come to an end was very disappointing to me."
And now that he's found out that other people in the State Department, including supervisors, "were doing things differently and were looking the other way, I think that's hard."
But Gration said he does not believe he did anything wrong, but "I can't speak the same for secretary Clinton. Other people have to make that decision, [and] she'll have to work that out herself."
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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