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Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton using her BlackBerry while wearing sunglasses on a military plane in 2011. | AP Photo Clinton BlackBerry photo led to State official’s query about email account

An iconic photograph of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton using her BlackBerry while wearing sunglasses on a military plane in 2011 prompted a recordkeeping official in her office to inquire about whether Clinton had been assigned a State.gov email address, the State Department disclosed this week.

Clarence Finney, who oversaw an office responsible for Freedom of Information Act searches, raised the question about an official account after seeing the photo in the media, according to testimony at a deposition held Wednesday and released Thursday. The image went viral on social media in 2012, prompting a "Texts from Hillary" meme.

"When Mrs. Clinton's photo appeared in the media with her using — appearing to use some sort of a mobile device, Clarence Finney checked with [information management staff] to confirm ... whether the answer was still that she did not have a State.gov e-mail account," State Director of Executive Secretariat Staff Karin Lang said.

Lang said Finney was told at the outset of Clinton's tenure as secretary that, "like her predecessor, [Clinton] would not use an official account." The follow-up question prompted by the photo elicited the same answer, that Clinton "still did not have a State.gov account," Lang added.

Finney can't recall who told him in 2008 or 2009 that Clinton did not plan to use official email, or who confirmed her continued lack of an account a few years later, Lang said.

The sworn testimony took place by court order in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the conservative group Judicial Watch seeking records about employment arrangements of top Clinton aide Huma Abedin.

In the suit at issue, the group has requested testimony from several current and former State officials, as well as a generic witness to offer testimony on behalf of the agency. State designated Lang as that witness and arranged the testimony at a Justice Department office in Washington.

Under questioning from Judicial Watch lawyer Michael Bekesha, Lang said the personnel in charge of searching for records in Clinton's office were not aware during her tenure and for at least a year after she left that she used a private email account for work-related communications, even though dozens of senior officials corresponded with her at the private address.

"No one engaged in this FOIA search had awareness of that source of potentially responsive documents during the time period of this FOIA search," Lang said. "They were not aware of the existence of e-mails from the former Secretary that could be potentially responsive to this request."

Lang also testified that when the initial search for employment records related to Abedin was done, State did not search Abedin's email archive or anyone else's. Instead, officials searched three document databases and asked for records from the "human resources officer" for the secretary of state's office. Such a search was only done after Clinton, Abedin and others provided State with emails from personal accounts starting in 2014, Lang said.

A State Department Office of Inspector General investigation found that in recent years the secretary of state's office did not routinely search emails in response to FOIA requests, even when it would have been reasonable to expect emails to be responsive to such requests. State has said it's overhauling how it responds to FOIA requests.

Asked whether searchers who did gather emails from some employees would have noticed that others such as Clinton and her top aides were also sending or receiving private email addresses, Lang said those involved in the searches probably were not looking for that.

"The email addresses that may be involved in those...potentially responsive documents would not necessarily be an item of attention of the reviewer, unless that was the specific topic," Lang said.

Judicial Watch released a transcript of Lang's deposition on the group's website Thursday.

Former Clinton Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills was deposed in the litigation last month. Abedin and current Undersecretary of State for Management Patrick Kennedy are scheduled to be deposed at the end of June.

