Hillary Clinton Defends Use of Personal Email Account While Secretary Of State

Hillary Clinton defended her use of her personal email account during her term as secretary of state, saying this was allowed under the rules but hastened to add that it would have been better if she had used a second email account and a second phone.

Clinton addressed the issue during a press conference at the United Nations on Tuesday where she revealed that she deleted about 30,000 personal emails.

"First, when I got to work as secretary of state, I opted for convenience to use my personal email account, which was allowed by the State Department, because I thought it would be easier to carry just one device for my work and for my personal emails instead of two," she said, according to a transcript by the Washington Post.

But as the controversy grew about what critics say were the national security risks involved in using a private email account, Clinton said, "Looking back, it would've been better if I'd simply used a second email account and carried a second phone, but at the time, this didn't seem like an issue."

She said most of her emails went to government employees using their ".gov" email addresses, which means they have been preserved. "The vast majority of my work emails went to government employees at their government addresses, which meant they were captured and preserved immediately on the system at the State Department," she said.

The State Department, Clinton said, asked former secretaries of state to provide copies of work-related emails from their personal accounts.

"I responded right away and provided all my emails that could possibly be work-related, which totalled roughly 55,000 printed pages, even though I knew that the State Department already had the vast majority of them," she said.

After sorting her emails, Clinton said she decided to delete her private personal emails including about her daughter Chelsea's wedding and family vacations.

"We went through a thorough process to identify all of my work-related emails and deliver them to the State Department," she said. "At the end, I chose not to keep my private personal emails -- emails about planning Chelsea's wedding or my mother's funeral arrangements, condolence notes to friends as well as yoga routines, family vacations, the other things you typically find in inboxes."

She deleted her personal emails, saying "no one wants their personal emails made public, and I think most people understand that and respect that privacy."

Clinton said she asked the State Department to release to the public all her work-related emails.

"In going through the e-mails, there were over 60,000 in total, sent and received. About half were work-related and went to the State Department and about half were personal that were not in any way related to my work," she said. "I had no reason to save them, but that was my decision because the federal guidelines are clear and the State Department request was clear."

Clinton said it is a "government employee's responsibility to determine what's personal and what's work-related."