Defense Secretary Conducted Some Official Business on a Personal Email Account

WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter relied on a personal email account to conduct a portion of his government business during his first months at the Pentagon, according to White
House and Defense Department officials and copies of Mr. Carter’s emails obtained by The New York Times.

Mr. Carter continued the practice, which violated Defense Department rules, for at least two months after it was publicly revealed in March that Hillary Clinton had exclusively used a personal email account as secretary of state, the officials said.

It is not clear when Mr. Carter stopped using the account. But an administration official said that when the White House chief of staff, Denis R. McDonough, learned about Mr. Carter’s email practices in May, Mr. McDonough directed the White House Counsel’s Office to contact the Defense Department to ask why Mr. Carter was relying on the personal account.

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Mr. McDonough wanted to ensure that Mr. Carter was following all federal laws and regulations governing email use, the official said.

In a written statement on Wednesday, a spokesman for Mr. Carter said that the defense secretary had determined that he had been wrong to use the personal account.

“After reviewing his email practices earlier this year, the secretary believes that his previous, occasional use of personal email for work-related business, even for routine administrative issues and backed up to his official account, was a mistake,” said the spokesman, Peter Cook. “As a result, he stopped such use of his personal email and further limited his use of email altogether.”

The use of a personal email account by a second top national security official in the Obama administration is an embarrassment for the White House and could result in further attacks from Republicans about lax administration safeguards on sensitive government information.

It is not clear how many work-related emails Mr. Carter sent and received from his personal account. Mrs. Clinton has said she sent and received roughly 30,000 work-related emails exclusively on her personal account over the four years she was secretary of state. There was no prohibition at the State Department on the exclusive use of a private server, although the practice was highly unusual.

In September, The Times filed a Freedom of Information Act request for all emails from the personal account that Mr. Carter sent or received with his chief of staff at the time, Eric Fanning, during the month of April. In November, the Defense Department provided The Times with 72 work-related emails that Mr. Carter sent or received from his personal email account. The emails show that Mr. Carter used an iPhone and iPad to send the messages, and that Mr. Carter was emailing Mr. Fanning and other top aides on their government email addresses.

Nearly all senior administration officials have personal email accounts that they occasionally use to communicate about work. But the officials said that Mr. Carter emailed with his closest aides about a variety of work-related matters, including speeches, meetings and news media appearances. In one of the emails obtained by The Times, Mr. Carter discussed how he had mistakenly placed a notecard in a “burn bag.” Such bags are typically used to destroy classified information.

The spokesman for Mr. Carter played down the secretary’s use of personal email, saying that he used it primarily to correspond with friends and family.

“Any email related to work received on this personal account, such as an invitation to speak at an event or an administrative issue, is copied or forwarded to his official account so it can be preserved as a federal record as appropriate,” said the spokesman, Mr. Cook.

“Secretary Carter strongly prefers to conduct communications on the phone or in person, and like many of his predecessors rarely uses email for official government business. The secretary does not directly email anyone within the department or the U.S. government except a very small group of senior advisers, usually his chief of staff.”

Mr. Cook declined to answer a question about whether Mr. Carter had violated the Defense Department’s email policies.

Mr. Carter was assigned a government email account when he became defense secretary in February but continued the use of the private account. In contrast to Mr. Cook’s statement, a former aide to Mr. Carter said the defense secretary used the personal account so frequently that members of his staff feared he would be hacked and worried about his not following the rules.

In 2012, the Defense Department adopted a policy that bars all employees regardless of rank or position from relying on personal email to conduct government business. Last year, President Obama signed a law directing federal officials not to send or receive emails on their personal accounts unless they were copied directly into their government accounts or forwarded to a government account within 20 days. A spokesman for Mr. Carter said that he had done this but did not provide any documentation to back that up.

The email practices of senior administration officials have come under increased scrutiny since the disclosures about Mrs. Clinton’s private account. An inspector general has said there was classified “Top Secret” information on Mrs. Clinton’s private account — having classified government material outside a secure government account is illegal — and the F.B.I. is investigating.

“The controversy swirling around Secretary Clinton’s use of a private email server should have acted as a wake-up call to cabinet level officials using similar commercial accounts to transmit electronic messages about government business,” said Jason R. Baron, a lawyer at Drinker Biddle and former director of litigation at the National Archives and Records Administration.

The emails obtained by The Times show Mr. Carter and his aides discussing a variety of matters, including legislation, television appearances and how to pay for a hotel bill.nytimes