Dear Hillary, This Is How To Use A Private Server While Secretary Of State - By Colin Powell Well, well, well. What do we have here. Maybe Hillary Clinton wasnt totally lying about her friend former Secretary of State Colin Powell telling her all about using electronics other than the official government ones for communications. Get a load of the email exchange that Rep. Elijah Cummings released on Wednesday for the whole world to read: On Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 7:37AM, wrote: Dear Colin, I hope to catch up soon w you, but I have one pressing question which only you can answer!What were the restrictions on your use of your blackberry? Did you use it in your personal office? Ive been told that the DSS personnel knew you had one and used it but no one fesses up to knowing how you used it! President Obama has struck a blow for berry addicts like us. I just have to figure out how to bring along the State Dept. Any and all advice is welcome. All the best to you and Alma, Hillary ANSWER: From: Colin Powell I didnt have a BlackBerry. What I did do was have a personal computer that was hooked up to a private phone line (sounds ancient.) So I could communicate with a wide range of friends directly without it going through the State Department servers. I even used it to do business with some foreign leaders and some of the senior folks in the Department on their personal email accounts. I did the same thing on the road in hotels. Now, the real issue had to do with PDAs, as we called them a few years ago before BlackBerry became a noun. And the issue was DS would not allow them into the secure spaces, especially up your way. When I asked why not they gave me all kinds of nonsense about how they gave out signals and could be read by spies, etc. Same reason they tried to keep mobile phones out of the suite. I had numerous meetings with them. We even opened one up for them to try to explain to me why it was more dangerous than say, a remote control for one of the many tvs in the suite. Or something embedded in my shoe heel. They never satisfied me and NSA/CIA wouldnt back off. So, we just went about our business and stopped asking. I had an ancient version of a PDA and used it. In general, the suite was so sealed that it is hard to get signals in or out wirelessly. However, there is a real danger. If it is public that you have a BlackBerry and it it government and you are using it, government or not, to do business, it may become an official record and subject to the law. Reading about the Presidents BB rules this morning, it sounds like it wont be as useful as it used to be. Be very careful. I got around it all by not saying much and not using systems that captured the data. You will find DS driving you crazy if you let them. They had Maddy tied up in knots. I refused to let them live in my house or build a place on my property. They found an empty garage half a block away. On weekends, I drove my beloved cars around town without them following me. I promised I would have a phone and not be gone more than an hour or two at Tysons or the hardware store. They hated it and asked me to sigh a letter relieving them of responsibility if I got whacked while doing that. I gladly did. Spontaneity was my security. They wanted to have two to three guys follow me around the building all the time. I said if they were doing their job guarding the place, they didnt need to follow me. I relented and let one guy follow me one full corridor behind just so they knew where I was if I was needed immediately. Their job is to keep you hermetically sealed up. Love, Colin Emphasis from Zero Hedge, but the reader gets the idea. Colin Powell actually DID coach Hillary Clinton on how to get around government security, even if he didnt really realize what he was doing at the time. Much of this appears to contradict the retired generals own words and assertions. It also explains somewhat why Hillary preferred older technology models, and why several of them were physically destroyed by the Clintons aides. And while this particular email does not relieve Hillary Clinton and her merry band of grifters from the guilt associated with email-gate, it does explain the lengths that security details will go to to be sure the whereabouts of their charges arent easy to find. The release of this particular email is very much political in nature. Cummings, one of the most forceful Democrats in the House of Representatives made that clear in his remarks. The exchange shows that Powell gave Clinton a detailed blueprint on how to skirt security rules and bypass requirements to preserve federal records, although Secretary Clinton has made clear that she did not rely on this advice, said Cummings.It also illustrates the longstanding problem that no secretary of State ever used an official unclassified email account until the current secretary of State, said Cummings. The Republican obsession with Secretary Clinton has reached a fever pitch, and they have been using taxpayer resources to single her out in a desperate and abusive attempt to hurt her presidential campaign, said Cummings. If Republicans were truly concerned with transparency, strengthening FOIA, and preserving federal records, they would be attempting to recover Secretary Powells emails from AOL, but they have taken no steps to do so despite the fact that this period including the run-up to the Iraq War was critical to our nations history, said Cummings. The obsession is actually now more about finding out just how many laws the woman brazenly broke moreso than any attempt to stop her presidential campaign. The reality is, as Powell did explain, that the Clintons had the private server set up for a year before she asked his advice. However, this also proves that Powell did do State business, official or not, on a private email account. And no, he has yet to provide those emails to the House in fulfillment of a Freedom of Information Act request. 