Hillary Clinton explained once before that she chose to use a personal email address on a homebrew server to conveniently carry a single device. However, several reports state that at times, Clinton used an iPad or a BlackBerry to send emails to her staff during her tenure as secretary of state.
At least four emails between Clinton and her senior advisers were released by the State Department in response to the request made by the AP in 2013 under the Freedom of Information Act. The request focused on Clinton's four-year-long correspondence with top advisers, which covered topics on drone strikes that occurred overseas and surveillance programs launched by the U.S.
The gathered emails are part of the search that started in 2010 when several public record requests were filed with the State Department. Only four messages were recovered after the successful use of search terms when responding to one such request.
While the emails seem limited in number, they have at least shown a glimpse of Clinton's correspondence during her tenure as secretary of state. As Clinton preferred to use personal email over a government-based account, the recovered messages were all sent and received through her private email address, which was hosted on a server at Clinton's property in Chappaqua, New York.
On one occasion, the correspondence showed that Clinton accidentally made the mistake of mixing personal emails with work-related ones. In one of her messages, Clinton mistakenly replied with questions about decorations to a message that came from Huma Abedin, one of her advisers, in 2011. Abedin had sent an AP story that discussed about Pakistan and the drone attacks that hit the country.
"I like the idea of these," wrote Clinton to Abedin. "How high are they? What would the bench be made of? And I'd prefer two shelves or attractive boxes/baskets/conmtainers (sic) on one. What do you think?"
"Did u mean to send to me?" was the reply she got from Abedin.
Clinton responded, "No-sorry! Also, pls let me know if you got a reply from my ipad. I'm not sure replies go thru."
Other emails contained a summary of the meeting between R-Ariz, Senator John McCain and senior officials from Egypt in 2011, which took place in Cairo. The others contained Clinton's expression of dismay when government information of classified nature was leaked to the media.
It was in 2009 when Clinton became the U.S. Secretary of State. A year later, Apple launched the iPad. Given this timeframe, Clinton could have thought about splitting her accounts by using an official State.gov email address and a BlackBerry device for her work emails and an iPad for her personal messages.
