Hillary Clinton is being criticized by open-government advocates across the political spectrum over her use of a nongovernmental email account during her tenure as secretary of state from Jan. 21, 2009, to Feb. 1, 2013,
The Wall Street Journal reported.
Under regulations then in place, Clinton was not required to use a government email account, although the Department of State was obliged to retain her correspondence, the Journal reported.
As government records managers and archivists were not custodians of her correspondence, transparency was compromised and responses to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests were constrained, foes of government secrecy said.
Clinton is seen as likely to seek the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination. During her failed 2008 presidential campaign, she said, "I think I'm probably the most transparent person in public life," according to the Journal.
Clinton's unusual practice shielded a considerable amount of her email from scrutiny by investigators and the public,
The New York Times reported.
At the department's request, Clinton handed over 55,000 pages of her emails in late 2014.
Records not in government custody are outside the purview of FOIA requests and congressional oversight, said Steven Aftergood of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists.
It is a problem that is probably fairly common in government, so the Clinton episode is an opportunity to remind officials of their obligations, Aftergood told the Journal.
Thomas Blanton of the National Security Archive at George Washington University said records specialists should sort out private from official mails. In Clinton's case, the decisions were left to her personal staff, according to the Journal.
Friends of the Earth, an environmental group opposed to the Keystone XL pipeline, was stymied in its efforts to get hold of emails between Clinton and a lobbyist for TransCanada who had previously worked on her campaign. The State Department emails given the group after repeat public records requests and two lawsuits did not include any from Clinton, the Journal reported.
America Rising, a conservative advocacy group, has filed a FOIA request for copies of all correspondence State Department staffers sent to Clinton's private email account.
A Republican-led House panel investigating Clinton's management of the fatal 2012 terrorist attack on U.S. facilities in Benghazi, Libya, was given State Department email records as part of its inquiry, but none from Clinton's personal account, the Times reported.
FOIA requests by The Associated Press in connection with Clinton's hiring of
Huma Abedin and by Citizens United over whether donors to her foundation traveled with Clinton overseas have likewise been thwarted, the Times reported.
The Department of State said it had no reason to think that Clinton used her email account to send top-secret material, the Journal reported.