Contact: Jill Farrell, Judicial Watch, 202-646-5172

WASHINGTON, Oct. 20, 2016 /Standard Newswire/ -- Judicial Watch today released new State Department documents containing email correspondence between former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Gen. David Petraeus, in which she had what she termed "blackberry blues" over her inability to use her BlackBerry inside her secure office. The FBI recovered these new emails from those not turned over by Hillary Clinton. These emails are government documents and not personal emails, as Clinton claims in defending her decision to not turn over 30,000 emails sent or received by her as secretary of state. The emails also show she knew about the security issues of her BlackBerry use (and yet denied recalling anything about it or refused to answer questions).

In the newly obtained email exchanges, Clinton also told Petraeus, "If there is ever anything you need or want me to know, pls use this personal email address" – hr15@att.blackberry.net – when corresponding with her. Petraeus, at the time of the email from Clinton, was the Commander of the United States Central Command, overseeing U.S. military efforts in critical areas, stretching from Northeast Africa across the Middle East to Central and South Asia, and including Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Egypt.

The new documents were among the nearly 15,000 Clinton emails discovered by the FBI, and obtained in response to a court order in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit for State Department records about Clinton's separate email system (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:15-cv-00689)).

On January 28, 2008, only one week after becoming secretary of state, Clinton sent an email to Petraeus from her non-state.gov email account apologizing for her "tardy" response to his earlier email and blaming it on what she termed "blackberry blues:"

From: H [mailto:hdr22@clintonmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, January 28, 2009 9:33 PM
To: Petraeus, David H. GEN USA
Subject: Re: Follow up

David – Sorry to be so tardy in responding. I've had blackberry blues. I can't use mine all day long since my whole office is a SCIF [Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility]. I don't yet have a computer and I had to change my address and lost some of my traffic.

 
(The State Department represented to a federal court that Hillary Clinton did not have a State Department computer.)

Shortly before taking office, Clinton emailed Petraeus asking that he use only her personal email account when contacting her. At the time, Petraeus was the Commander of the United States Central Command:

From: hr15@att.blackberry.net
Sent: Saturday, January 10, 2009 3:57 PM
To: Petraeus, David H. GEN USA
Subject: Follow up

Dear Dave,

Thanks for giving me so much of your time the last two nights. I appreciated our conversations and enjoyed the chance to see you and Richard becoming acquainted. I'm looking forward to working w you both. If there is ever anything you need or want me to know, pls use this personal email address. All the best, Hillary.