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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.

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