Joel Gehrke has a piece on the homepage about a recently released State Department Inspector General report on its inspection of the U.S. embassy in Japan and its compliance with State Department policy. Joel reports that the IG found that embassy staff, including Ambassador Caroline Kennedy, had used personal email to conduct official business. The report suggests that embassy staff had sent and received emails marked sensitive but unclassified using commercial email services. The frequency and volume of that email is not disclosed.

As we have observed in these pages, the occasional use of personal emails where other means of communications may not be available (as when an official server is down), is consistent with State Department policies, provided certain safeguards are met. Although the details are not spelled out, what the embassy staff were doing was likely nothing like what Hillary Clinton did when she set up a private server to serve as her exclusive email while Secretary of State and to circumvent public recordkeeping and disclosure requirements. So this report serves not so much as a reprimand than a reminder to embassy officials to use more caution. Nevertheless, the IG warns that routine use of commercial email for official business gives rise to many risks, including “data loss, hacking, phishing, and spoofing of email accounts, as well as inadequate protections for personally identifiable information.”

A couple of things stand out. First, the IG reiterates what we have repeatedly described as official (and very clear) State Department policy: “Department policy is that employees generally should not use private email accounts (for example, Gmail, AOL, Yahoo, and so forth) for official business. Employees are also expected to use approved, secure methods to transmit Sensitive but Unclassified information when available and practical.”

Ironically, the report cites Hillary Clinton’s 2011 cable to foreign embassy and consular officials (along with the State Department Foreign Affairs Manual) as support for that policy. (Clinton sympathizers have argued that this cable only carried her official signature, meaning that she did not write and send it herself. That’s a laughable defense.) The IG’s conclusions thus implicitly rejects Clinton’s insistence that she followed State Department policy, as I explained yesterday. So throw another log on the bonfire of Clinton excuses.

More tellingly, however, is the State Department’s response. Keeping with its full throated defense of all things Hillary Clinton, the State Department press shop responded to the report by insisting that the “use of private e-mail is allowed for government purposes, as long as certain rules are followed.” The press response seems to hold up the exception as the rule. The IG’s formulation is more accurate — the general policy of the State Department, as stated in a 2005 policy manual provision, is that “normal day-to-day operations be conducted on an [authorized information system].” When those official systems are not available, personal email may be used, provided the sender takes into account the security risks that sending over a commercial email system may entail. So while necessity may permit such occasional use, it is strongly discouraged and in no way permitted as the general rule.

At a press briefing yesterday, the State Department’s John Kirby got a little closer to the truth: “It is not prohibited to use private email. It is discouraged, obviously,” he said. “We recognize there are circumstances where there may be no other choice.” Perhaps Caroline Kennedy and her staff had no other choice when they used commercial systems — perhaps they did have a choice. It’s really not clear from the IG report. But what is clear is that Clinton never even opted to try to use the official system. Her end run violated the very policy she insisted that others follow.