Ousted ambassador sounds off on Hillary email flap
A former ambassador now entangled in the storm over former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private e-mail account fired back at the State Department Friday, disputing claims that he made a determined effort to conduct official business via an e-mail system not under government control.
In a lengthy e-mail to POLITICO and other news outlets, Scott Gration, a former Air Force general who served as ambassador to Kenya, brushed aside comparisons between his situation and Clinton’s. However,
Gration acknowledged that his dismissal in 2012 — while Clinton was secretary — was due in part to the department’s resistance to his efforts to have easy access to his Gmail account while he served as the top U.S. diplomat in Nairobi.
“...My experience was somewhat different than Secretary Clinton’s use of her commercial account, yet I was ‘fired’ for the use of Gmail in the US Embassy, my insistence on improving our physical security posture, and other twisted and false allegations,” Gration wrote from Kenya, where he now works in the private sector. “I’ve chosen to move on and to be better, not bitter...”
Gration portrayed his difficulties as largely a result of clashing with the State Department’s information technology bureaucracy, which he said resisted reasonable requests to enable easy access to his personal e-mail account during the work day.
“It is true that I used my Gmail account to access my alerts and unclassified personal emails. I had subscribed to three ‘alerts’ programs that sent me breaking news stories, analysis of important events, and Africa-related articles…I use Gmail because these services were not available on the State Department’s OpenNet computer network,” the former ambassador wrote. “Over the years, I had also built a professional network that used my Gmail address. I wanted to have access to these capabilities and contacts while at work.”
Gration did not explain why he could not re-direct alerts to his State.gov e-mail address. He did say that the State Department also bucked his attempts to access his personal account via his government Blackberry phone.
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/03/scott-gration-ex-ambassador-hillary-clinton-emails-115820.html
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