Ambassador Caroline Kennedy and other officials at the U.S. embassy in Japan used personal e-mail accounts to conduct government business, according to a new report from the State Department inspector general’s office.
“OIG’s Office of Evaluations and Special Projects conducted a review and confirmed that senior embassy staff, including the Ambassador, used personal e-mail accounts to send and receive messages containing official business,” a report from Inspector General Steve Linick’s office says. “In addition, OIG identified instances where e-mails labeled Sensitive but Unclassified were sent from, or received by, personal e-mail accounts.”
Linick is also investigating former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private e-mail account for government business. Crucially, the report does not suggest that Kennedy used a private e-mail account exclusively, as Clinton did. The e-mail finding is part of a broader critique of the embassy’s performance — a report prefaced by a suggestion that Kennedy lacks the experience necessary for the job.
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The State Department was quick to defend Kennedy. “The use of private e-mail is allowed for government purposes, as long as certain rules are followed,” a spokesperson told Politico. “The Mission periodically reminds employees of the importance of following these rules, laid out in the 2013 National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) guidance. These rules include ensuring that certain types of protected information are not transmitted in non-official channels and that records sent or received on private e-mail accounts are preserved as required.”
The report’s broader review of the American embassy in Japan includes several other unfavorable findings, and makes 65 recommendations designed to improve embassy security and management. “The role and authorities of the Ambassador’s chief of staff are not clearly defined, leading to confusion among staff as to her level of authority, and her role in internal embassy communications,” the report says, adding that “the embassy is not coordinating reporting and diplomatic engagement across the mission.”
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Linick’s office implicitly suggests that many of the embassy’s problems are the result of Kennedy’s lack of diplomatic experience. “The Ambassador does not have extensive experience leading and managing an institution the size of the U.S. Mission to Japan,” the report says. “She relies upon two key senior staff members — her non-career chief of staff and a career Senior Foreign Service deputy chief of mission (DCM) — to make sure that Embassy Tokyo and its constituent posts receive the resources and guidance they need to conduct day-to-day operations.”
#related#Obama’s habit of giving plum ambassadorships to bundlers and major political supporters such as Kennedy angered career diplomats early in his second term. “Now is the time to end the spoils system and the de facto ‘three-year rental’ of ambassadorships,” the American Foreign Service Association said in a statement. “The United States is alone in this practice; no other major democracy routinely appoints non-diplomats to serve as envoys to other countries.”
The inspector general did note that Kennedy, the daughter of President John F. Kennedy, is “very popular in Japan because of her family history and Japan’s widespread respect for her father’s efforts to promote post-war reconciliation and world peace.”
— Joel Gehrke is a political reporter for National Review.