CNN Asks Dick Cheney At Length About "Hillary Clinton's Email Scandal"

Cheney Talks To CNN About “Hillary Clinton's Email Scandal.” On the August 31 edition of CNN's New Day, CNN aired a portion of its interview with former Vice President Dick Cheney, in which Jamie Gangel repeatedly asked Cheney for his thoughts on how Clinton handled her emails while at the State Department:

CHENEY: I found it surprising that somebody as high ranking as secretary of state, who's dealing with classified and sensitive information all the time, would think that it was OK to have a private server in your phone where you put information and so forth -- where you send emails.

GANGEL: So how would you describe her handling her emails this way, in a word?

CHENEY: Well I think it was sloppy and unprofessional. That it reflected a lack of understanding about how easy it is for adversaries to tap into communications, to get involved, for example, obviously, in reading email. Which we know now is very extensive. The Chinese recently picked up the files of everybody who is currently working for the federal government. Now the situation strikes me -- maybe she went into it ignorant, but I find that hard to believe. She's an intelligent woman, she spent a lot of time in the White House. You should not operate in the way she did. And I've got to believe it was not consistent with the U.S. State Department personnel. It certainly wasn't consistent, apparently, with the way we handle classified information in the federal government.

GANGEL: She should have known better.

CHENEY: I think she should have known better.

GANGEL: You think the Russians and the Chinese have her emails?

CHENEY: They've got my personnel records. How can they not have her emails?

GANGEL: Do you think this undermines or disqualifies her candidacy?

CHENEY: I think there's a very real possibility of that. [CNN, New Day, 8/31/15]

But Doesn't Mention Fact That Colin Powell, Secretary Of State While Cheney Was Vice President, Used Personal Email Account For Government Business

Colin Powell: I Used Private Email To Contact Staff, Ambassadors, Foreign Ministers. In his book, It Worked For Me: In Life And Leadership, former Secretary of State Colin Powell wrote that during his tenure at the State Department during the Bush administration, he used a personal email account and a private laptop computer to contact staff, ambassadors, and foreign ministers. From his book:

To complement the official State Department computer in my office, I installed a laptop computer on a private line. My personal email account on the laptop allowed me direct access to anyone online. I started shooting emails to my principal assistants, to individual ambassadors, and increasingly to my foreign-minister colleagues who like me were trying to bring their ministries into the 186,000-miles-per-second world. [Colin Powell, It Worked For Me: In Life And Leadership, page 151]

Powell Did Not Save Emails From Personal Account During Time As Secretary Of State. Speaking on ABC's This Week, Powell explained that not only did he use personal email to conduct government business, but he also failed to save email records from his time at the State Department:

On ABC's “This Week,” former Secretary of State Colin Powell declined to comment on the Clinton controversy, saying his emails as secretary were never disclosed because he did not save them. 

“I don't have any to turn over,” Powell said. "I did not keep a cache of them. I did not print them off. I do not have thousands of pages somewhere in my personal files. And, in fact, a lot of the emails that came out of my personal account went into the State Department system. They were addressed to State Department employees and the state.gov domain. But I don't know if the servers at the State Department captured those or not.

“They were all unclassified and most of them, I think, are pretty benign,” Powell added. “So I'm not terribly concerned even if they were able to recover them.” [Yahoo News, 3/8/15]