Clinton used her own BlackBerry rather than a State Dept. device

The BlackBerry device Hillary Rodham Clinton used when she was secretary of state was not issued by the government, the State Department said Thursday, a detail that complicates Clinton’s explanation that she chose to rely on an unorthodox private e-mail address and server purely for convenience.

Clinton “was not issued a State Department BlackBerry,” department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.

Clinton’s use of private e-mail instead of a government account has become a stumbling block as she readies a presidential campaign expected to launch early next month. Clinton has been hiring staff rapidly and setting up the bones of what will quickly become extensive field operations in Iowa and elsewhere once she makes a formal announcement.

Addressing the mounting ­e-mails drama Tuesday, Clinton said she chose not to use a government account because it would have been inconvenient to carry two devices. In hindsight, she said, “it would have been probably smarter” to do so.

“When I got to work as secretary of state, I opted for convenience to use my personal e-mail 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 e-mails instead of two,” Clinton said.

The data from her ­clintonemail.com account during that time was stored on a private server in her Chappaqua, N.Y., home, meaning that her entire electronic communications system — from device to server — was siloed off from the State Department.

In 2009, when Clinton took office and set up the e-mail arrangement, government-issued BlackBerry devices could not be used to host commercial or other outside e-mail addresses. The Washington Post reports.

Clinton could have chosen a government device, which would have meant using a government address.

Had she done that, her e-mails, both professional and personal, would have been more quickly accessible to congressional investigators, historians, journalists or others seeking information about her actions and communications as the nation’s top diplomat.

But in choosing to make the single device she carried a personal one, Clinton made that material harder to obtain. Clinton has turned over 55,000 pages of
e-mail printouts to the State Department that she and her aides determined were related to government work; the rest, which Clinton and her team deemed personal, were deleted, she said this week.

Michael Short, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee, said in an e-mail to reporters that Clinton’s use of a personal device is “potentially a big problem.”

He cited State Department regulations that “specifically lay out how a personal device must be secured so as to not compromise sensitive information and/or the conversations.”

Clinton’s office has said that the BlackBerry was properly encrypted and secured. Spokesman Nick Merrill said Thursday that it is “self-evident from everything that has been said to date” that Clinton chose her personal e-mail over a government address, regardless of what device was used.

Also on Thursday came news that Clinton had delivered an unannounced speech on Wednesday to eBay executives at the e-commerce firm’s headquarters in Silicon Valley.

Clinton was paid for the California appearance, according to a source familiar with the arrangement. As a practice, Clinton’s representatives do not disclose her fee, but she typically makes $200,000 to $300,000 per appearance, with visits to the West Coast usually commanding higher payment than those closer to her homes in New York and Washington.

At eBay, Clinton’s Wednesday night appearance was a “surprise” to the 500 company executives who had gathered for eBay’s Women’s Initiative Network Summit. It was not announced publicly and was closed to the media. Her California trip became public only when USA Today published a story early Thursday morning about the eBay speech.

The newspaper reported that Clinton said a diverse workplace “isn’t just the right thing to do, it’s the smart thing to do for eBay’s bottom line. Inclusivity in the 21st century is a recipe for success. It brings fresh ideas and higher revenues.”

Clinton gave another paid speech in California on Feb. 24, when she addressed “Lead On,” a Silicon Valley women’s conference. She is slated to give another paid speech on March 19, addressing camp counselors and other educators at the American Camp Association’s conference in Atlantic City.