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By Perry Bacon Jr.

Hillary Clinton's exclusive use of a non-government email account to send messages to her staff during her time as Secretary of State is a break from what other top officials have done, raising concerns from both Democrats and Republicans about the propriety of the practice.

Aides to former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and former President George W. Bush said neither official routinely sent e-mails to staffers while they held those posts. Rice "did not use her personal e-mail for official communication as Secretary" and instead exclusively used her State Department account, according to a top aide who did not want to be quoted publicly.

Attorney General Eric Holder regularly uses his government account, according to spokesman Brian Fallon, as does Valerie Jarrett, one of President Barack Obama's top advisers.

As Clinton aides have noted, Colin Powell did regularly use a personal e-mail account while Secretary of State.

A Powell aide confirmed that information, saying, "General Powell used a personal email account during his tenure as Secretary of State. He was not aware of any restrictions nor does he recall being made aware of any over the four years he served at State."

Other former office holders rarely used email accounts - personal or official - at all during their tenure.

"President Bush never used email in the White House. We only ever spoke on the phone or in person, or through memos, of course. I think it was the same at the Treasury Department, too. I never emailed with any of the three secretaries I worked with," said Tony Fratto, a former Deputy White House Press Secretary in the George W. Bush administration. Fratto is supporting Jeb Bush's 2016 presidential run.

"Everyone in government is wary of email," he added. "I'm surprised that Secretary Clinton used a personal account. I'm surprised she used email at all, to be honest. It's so hard to keep it secure."

Steve Clemons, a foreign policy expert at The Atlantic, said he has "never dealt with anyone at the highest levels of government who didn't have an official email address."

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Hillary Clinton's Personal Email Use Differed From Other Top Officials

WASHINGTON -- When Hillary Clinton traveled more than a million miles as Secretary of State, she famously carried her Blackberry with her.

State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said Tuesday that Clinton's use of a personal email account --rather than a government account -- to conduct business was not illegal.

In this Oct. 18, 2011, file photo, then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton checks her Blackberry from a desk inside a C-17 military plane upon her departure from Malta, in the Mediterranean Sea, bound for Tripoli, Libya.

AP Photo/Kevin Lamarque, Pool, File

"There was no prohibition on using a non State.gov account for official business, as long as it is preserved," Harf said.

But Clinton aides did not submit those emails to government archives, as required by a 2009 law. They claim nine out ten emails she sent were to State Department colleagues and therefore in the department's computer system.

Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill said there was "every expectation they would be retained."

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Aides to Hillary Clinton and the State Department are defending her use of a personal email address while secretary of state, while others are raising questions about whether her actions diverged from the habits of her predecessors and whether she complied with laws governing federal record keeping.

CBS News State Department Correspondent Margaret Brennan has been in contact with a Clinton aide who said, "Nothing nefarious was at play. She had a Blackberry, she used it prior to State, and like her predecessors she continued to use it when she got to State. This was not bucking the system; this was in keeping with exactly what former Secretaries had done."

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Clinton's spokesman says the former secretary of state did nothing wrong using her private email to do official government business. That practic...

Clinton, according to her spokesman, Nick Merrill, "used her own email account when engaging with any Department officials. For government business, she emailed them on their Department accounts, with every expectation they would be retained."

One of her predecessors, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, appears to have used his personal email in much the same way. He wrote in his book, "It Worked for Me: In Life and Leadership:"

"To complement the official State Department computer in my office, I installed a laptop computer on a private line. My personal email account on the laptop allowed me direct access to anyone online. I started shooting emails to my principal assistants, to individual ambassadors, and increasingly to my foreign-minister colleagues who like me were trying to bring their ministries into the 186,000-miles-per-second world."

Indeed, John Kerry is, according to the State Department, the first secretary of state whose primary account is a state.gov email address.

Last year, the State Department asked former Secretaries for help in retaining their email records. Clinton turned over 55,000 pages of emails, "anything pertaining to her work there," a Clinton aide told Brennan. "So if she emailed with her daughter about flower arrangements for her wedding, that didn't go in, but if she emailed one of the 100 State Department officials she regularly corresponded with, State had it in their servers already, and HRC's office replicated that to ensure it was all there. 9 out of 10 emails that she sent over the course of her tenure went to the State Department."

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Hillary Clinton's team defends her email usage during her tenure at State

The New York Timesis reporting that, during the time that she served as secretary of State,Hillary Clinton exclusively used a private e-mail account with unknown security protocolsto communicate with State Department employees, others in the federal government and, presumably, foreign government officials, in what appears to be a violation of both the letter and the spirit of federal record keeping laws:

WASHINGTON Hillary Rodham Clinton exclusively used a personal email account to conduct government business as secretary of state, State Department officials said, and may have violated federal requirements that officials correspondence be retained as part of the agencys record.

Mrs. Clinton did not have a government email address during her four-year tenure at the State Department. Her aides took no actions to have her personal emails preserved on department servers at the time, as required by the Federal Records Act.

It was only two months ago, in response to a new State Department effort to comply with federal record-keeping practices, that Mrs. Clintons advisers reviewed tens of thousands of pages of her personal emails and decided which ones to turn over to the State Department. All told, 55,000 pages of emails were given to the department. Mrs. Clinton stepped down from the secretarys post in early 2013.

Her expansive use of the private account was alarming to current and former National Archives and Records Administration officials and government watchdogs, who called it a serious breach.

It is very difficult to conceive of a scenario short of nuclear winter where an agency would be justified in allowing its cabinet-level head officer to solely use a private email communications channel for the conduct of government business, said Jason R. Baron, a lawyer at Drinker Biddle & Reath who is a former director of litigation at the National Archives and Records Administration.

A spokesman for Mrs. Clinton, Nick Merrill, defended her use of the personal email account and said she has been complying with the letter and spirit of the rules.

Under federal law, however, letters and emails written and received by federal officials, such as the secretary of state, are considered government records and are supposed to be retained so that congressional committees, historians and members of the news media can find them. There are exceptions to the law for certain classified and sensitive materials.

Mrs. Clinton is not the first government official or first secretary of state to use a personal email account on which to conduct official business. But her exclusive use of her private email, for all of her work, appears unusual, Mr. Baron said. The use of private email accounts is supposed to be limited to emergencies, experts said, such as when an agencys computer server is not working.

I can recall no instance in my time at the National Archives when a high-ranking official at an executive branch agency solely used a personal email account for the transaction of government business, said Mr. Baron, who worked at the agency from 2000 to 2013.

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Report: Hillary Clinton evaded government e-mail while secretary of State

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