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Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images Hillary Clinton attends the Step It Up For Gender Equality event celebrating the 20th anniversary of the fourth World Conference On Women in Beijing at Hammerstein Ballroom on March 10, 2015 in New York City.

Back in April of 2007, when she was campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination for the first time, then-Senator Hillary Clinton lashed out at the secrecy of the George W. Bush administration.

She told a New Hampshire audience that if elected she would implement a "plan to enhance accountability and transparency" and "to replace secrecy and mystery with openness." One part of her plan: "It's time our government went fully online as well."

She lost her White House bid. But 20 months later, before Barack Obama took that job and she became secretary of state, she set up a private computer server registered to her home in Chappaqua, N.Y., to handle all her official, as well as private, emails for the next four years. Her decision a secret until earlier this month impeded efforts by the press and others to review State Department actions.

Today it is Hillary Clinton's record of transparency that has come under fire. At a press conference Tuesday, she acknowledged that in retrospect "it would've been better for me to use two separate phones and two email accounts." She has asked the State Department to release her official emails, a process that could take months.

Few public figures have been as scrutinized as Hillary Clinton. Sometimes her disclosures go beyond what is required, but she's also racked up a reputation for secrecy that at times has returned to haunt her.

Here are five examples covering the last two decades. Some are drawn from a 2007 book I did, with Don Van Natta Jr., entitled "Her Way: The Hopes and Ambitions of Hillary Rodham Clinton. (Little Brown & Co.) Clinton's office didn't respond to a request for comment.

1) 1992: The Commodity Trades

During Bill Clinton's first run for the White House, his campaign declined to release all of the couple's tax returns. Later it emerged that the campaign had weighed requests from the press and decided not to do so, because a few of the returns showed Hillary Clinton's spectacular success in commodities trading, in which she made almost $100,000 from an initial investment of $1,000 in a matter of months for a return of almost 10,000 percent. Hillary Clinton threatened a campaign lawyer who had access to the material with retribution if she released the data: "You'll never work in Democratic politics again," the lawyer, Loretta Lynch, says Clinton told her. It wasn't until 1994, as the New York Times prepared to publish an article detailing the trades, that the Clintons made public the returns.

2) 1993: The Health Care Task Force

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Hillary Clintons Top 5 Clashes Over Secrecy

Mrs Clinton said she had used a private email address for the sake of convenience, and had deleted some 31,830 emails which she deemed personal, an explanation which only served to further rile her critics.

The inquisition clearly infuriated Mrs Clinton: not just the impudence of those who dared question her integrity but also as she would see it the relentless, trivialising force of the modern media that always prefers froth to facts; nit-picking to policy.

But therein lies one of Mrs Clintons biggest problems if as everyone expects she announces a run for president in 2016.

More than ever, she seems incapable of hiding her hostility towards those who would challenge her. After years in the tank filled exclusively with presidents and prime-ministers, shes become the political equivalent of a puffer-fish: the slightest provocation elicits a prickly response.

Thats what undid her when questioned by Congress in 2012 over her handling of the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi that left a US ambassador dead on her watch - what difference does it make? she demanded.

And again during her book tour last year when questions were raised about her personal wealth and $250,000-a-pop speaking engagements You have no reason to remember, but we came out of the White House not only dead broke, but in debt, she said, to gales of laughter.

Though she tried to fight the impulse, she did it again this week at her press conference. She started trying to make nice, but when confronted with perfectly legitimate questions about why she deleted all those "personal" emails before anyone could review them, it was not long before the tone became defensive, scratchy.

As so often with Mrs Clinton, who has suffered as much criticism over the years as anyone could reasonably endure, the bristle reflex was partly understandable.

In using a personal email, she had done nothing that former secretaries Albright, Powell and Rice had not done before her, and no-one had accused them of cover-ups, she complained. So trust me, she asked, as you once trusted them.

But therein lies a second problem; clearly not enough people do trust Mrs Clinton; many are Republicans, but the doubters also include much of the so-called liberal media that Republicans accuse of giving Mr Obama a free pass these last six years.

Read more here:
Hillary Clinton's prickly reaction to email row could be fatal to 2016 hopes

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The latest flap over her private emails as secretary of state is far from the first time she's been accused of lacking transparency.

The latest flap over her private emails as secretary of state is far from the first time shes been accused of lacking transparency.

by Jeff Gerth ProPublica, March 13, 2015, 8 a.m.

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Back in April of 2007, when she was campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination for the first time, then-Senator Hillary Clinton lashed out at the secrecy of the George W. Bush administration.

She told a New Hampshire audience that if elected she would implement a "plan to enhance accountability and transparency" and "to replace secrecy and mystery with openness." One part of her plan: "It's time our government went fully online as well."

She lost her White House bid. But 20 months later, before Barack Obama took that job and she became secretary of state, she set up a private computer server registered to her home in Chappaqua, N.Y., to handle all her official, as well as private, emails for the next four years. Her decision a secret until earlier this month impeded efforts by the press and others to review State Department actions.

Today it is Hillary Clinton's record of transparency that has come under fire. At a press conference Tuesday, she acknowledged that in retrospect "it would've been better for me to use two separate phones and two email accounts." She has asked the State Department to release her official emails, a process that could take months.

Few public figures have been as scrutinized as Hillary Clinton. Sometimes her disclosures go beyond what is required, but she's also racked up a reputation for secrecy that at times has returned to haunt her.

Excerpt from:
Hillary Clintons Top Five Clashes Over Secrecy

As Hillary Clinton's expected April presidential launch nears, her already sizable campaign apparatus is moving into place and getting close to signing a lease for office space in Brooklyn.

Clinton and her team have recently coalesced around the New York borough, according to multiple sources, and are nearing a deal for office space at the MetroTech complex in Brooklyn.

A lease has not been signed yet, according to a source with knowledge, but very serious negotiations are ongoing and the Clinton team settled on Brooklyn after eying other locations around New York City. She ran her 2008 presidential campaign from Virginia, just across the Potomac River from Washington.

The Clinton team is still preparing for an April announcement, several top Democratic aides, donors and supporters say, although the precise date still remains up for discussion. Dozens of campaign staffers, who have been sworn to secrecy after being notified that they were being hired, have been told to report to New York by late March.

Clinton has been conducting personal interviews with several potential advisers at her home in Chappaqua, while her top aides have been assembling a communications, fundraising, political and social media team.

Clinton supporters see a number of benefits in Brooklyn, including ease of attracting talent to the New York area and the fact that it's known for ethnic and socio-economic diversity.

On the downside, some Clinton supporters have expressed concern with being closely associated with New York City, and in particular Wall Street, which is only two subway stops away.

The campaign headquarters also creates a logistical challenge for staffers in a city of high rents. The campaign is asking supporters in New York if anyone who can open their doors and take in young workers.

The email controversy that has engulfed the Clinton operation for nearly two weeks did not accelerate the timing of her presidential announcement, several top Democrats said, but it did underscore the need for a full-scale campaign apparatus to deal with the incoming criticism.

"I think folks are realizing now more than ever that they need to announce earlier rather than later," a source with knowledge told CNN. "The whole argument that she is left undefended without an official apparatus around her just became magnified 100 times over with this email issue."

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Hillary Clinton set on Brooklyn HQ

Hillary Clinton #39;s Press Conference Raises More Questions
A closer look at the private email controversy. Fox News: Hannity http://www.foxnews.com/hannity/index.html Fox News: Hannity - The Great American Blog http://hannity.blogs.foxnews.com/ Fox...

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