Hillary Clinton reportedly told the FBI that George W. Bush era Secretary of State Colin Powell advised her to stick with her personal email when she became the nation's top diplomat.

The assertion is included in notes from Clinton's three-and-a-half-hour interview with investigators the bureau provided to Congress this week, according to the New York Times, and the conversation is detailed in an upcoming book.

The FBI documents have not been made available to the public, despite a request from Clinton's presidential campaign that they be widely released. And Clinton has never claimed in front of cameras that Powell advised her on the matter.

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Hillary Clinton reportedly told the FBI that George W. Bush era Secretary of State Colin Powell advised her to stick with her personal email when she became the nation's top diplomat. They're pictured above in 2014

A representative for Powell told the Times the ex-cabinet official does not recall the exchange that author Joe Conason wrote about in his book, out Sept. 13.

An excerpt in the Times regales a dinner party Madeleine Albright hosted for Clinton near the beginning of her four-year tenure at the State Department.

'Toward the end of the evening, over dessert, Albright asked all of the former secretaries to offer one salient bit of counsel to the nation’s next top diplomat,' Conason says. 'Powell told her to use her own email, as he had done, except for classified communications, which he had sent and received via a State Department computer.'

Powell is said to have told Clinton 'his use of personal email had been transformative for the department.' The conversation 'confirmed a decision she had made months earlier — to keep her personal account and use it for most messages.'

Henry Kissinger and Condoleezza Rice were also at the dinner, Conason writes.

The Times received an advance copy of Conason's 'Man of the World: The Further Endeavors of Bill Clinton.' It is based on accounts from both Bill and Hillary Clinton in the decade and a half since they relinquished the White House.

Clinton's presidential campaign did not respond to a request for comment on the report in the Times.

Aides have said that they would have preferred the FBI make public the documents it provided to Congress because the campaign was concerned about leaks, like the one that came today in the Times.

Madeleine Albright, left, reportedly hosted a dinner for Clinton near the beginning of her four-year tenure at the State Department at which Powell, center, told her to use personal email

Powell said that while he doesn't remember the dinner conversation, he did send Clinton a memo on his own email use when he secretary of state, from 2001 to 2005.

The memo, which may be among the FBI files distributed to Congress, explained how his use of email 'vastly improved communications within the State Department,' a statement said.

Clinton has used Powell in her public defense of her behavior - which she now says was a 'mistake' - but only as an example of a previous secretary who relied solely on private email to conduct government business.

But he did not use his own personal server to route the messages through, as Clinton did. An inspector general report that came out in May also pointed out that Powell served when the guidelines for using email were not clear.

Not only did Clinton use her own server, she kept it a secret from the government. Its existence was revealed only after she concluded her term as secretary of state.