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 The State Department's Office of Inspector General made the
finding in a routine report on the Tokyo embassy as the agency is
under scrutiny for Hillary Clinton's use of a private email address
and server when she was secretary of state.
"Senior embassy staff, including the ambassador, used personal email
accounts to send and receive messages containing official business,"
the report said, saying it found "instances when emails labeled
'sensitive but unclassified'" were sent and received on private
email addresses.
It did not say whether Kennedy, daughter of former President John F.
Kennedy, had sent or received such information.
The report cited risks to using personal email accounts, including
data loss, hacking, phishing, and spoofing of email accounts, as
well as inadequate protections for personally identifiable
information.
State Department spokesman John Kirby stressed that using personal
email was not barred by the agency's rules. But he said it was
discouraged and that employees needed to ensure that emails were
eventually preserved within the U.S. government system.
He also said that there was no indication that Kennedy had violated
department policies.
The State Department was implementing all the recommendations in the
report, Kirby said. There was no separate statement from Kennedy
about the matter on the U.S. Embassy in Japan's website.
"Department policy is that employees generally should not use
private email accounts (for example, Gmail, AOL, Yahoo, and so
forth) for official business," the report said.
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"Employees are also expected to use approved, secure methods to
transmit sensitive but unclassified information when available and
practical."
As is typical of such inspector general reviews, the report was
largely critical, although former senior U.S. diplomats said it was
by no means the harshest that they had seen and that many of the
issues raised were familiar.
However, the report noted that, in a departure from State Department
practice, Kennedy's chief of staff attended meetings as a note taker
but that there were "gaps" in the record of what was discussed.
State Department emails have become an issue in Clinton's campaign
for the Democratic presidential nomination because as secretary of
state she used a private "clintonemail.com" email address rather
than an official "state.gov" one.
Clinton has said the unusual arrangement broke no rules that
were in force at the time, although the arrangement has caused
long delays in providing federal records to lawmakers and the
public to which they are entitled, critics say.
(Reporting by Arshad Mohammed; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
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