Outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder has maintained several government email accounts under aliases, according to
Politico.
Revelations that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton used a
personal email account, rather than one maintained by the Department of State, for government business has raised concerns by lawmakers responsible for the agency's oversight and advocates of governmental transparency.
Holder used a number of pseudonyms, including Henry Yearwood (a combination of family names) and David Kendricks (from two members of The Temptations), according to
The Huffington Post. Since all were nonetheless official @usdoj.gov accounts, they are retained on government servers.
A Justice Department spokesman told Huffington that other Cabinet members have also used pen names and that Holder did so to enhance security and thwart efforts to flood his email account. DOJ staff responsible for responding to Freedom of Information requests are aware of the aliases and, when appropriate, have made available messages from all of Holder's accounts, though the confidential addresses are redacted.
Besides Holder, other members of the Obama administration also used aliases, including former Health and Human Services secretary Kathleen Sebelius and former EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson,
The Associated Press reported in 2013.
Former Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel used two BlackBerry phones, one for personal use and the other for his government work. "He understood the need to keep the two separate and to keep government business on his official email," a Pentagon spokesman said.
NBC News-4 reported that it had come across a single official email from White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough that was sent to Hagel's private Gmail address. "On some limited occasions, an email may have been sent to or from the wrong account," the Pentagon spokesman told News-4.
The
George W. Bush administration faced its own email controversy in 2007, when congressional requests for documents pertaining to the dismissals of eight U.S. attorneys revealed that some internal White House emails had been sent via non-government accounts or had been lost,
The Los Angeles Times reported at the time.
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