Powell says he doesn't have any of his State emails

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell says he doesn’t have any emails to turn over to the State Department.

Appearing on ABC’s “This Week” Sunday, Powell responded to revelations that he used a personal email account, rather than a government one, when he was in charge of the State Department. Questions about his email use arose last week when it was disclosed that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton used a personal email account during her tenure.


“I don’t have any to turn over. I did not keep a cache of them. I did not print them off. I do not have thousands of pages somewhere in my personal files,” Powell said. “A lot of the emails that came out of my personal account went into the State Department system. They were addressed to State Department employees and state.gov domain, but I don’t know if the servers in the State Department captured those or not. “

Powell said it would be inappropriate to comment on Clinton’s email use. The State Department’s policy on personal email accounts dates back to 2005, the year Powell left the administration.

“When I entered the State Department I found an antiquated system that had to be modernized and modernized quickly,” he said. “I started using [email] in order to get everybody to use it, so we could be a 21st-century institution and not a 19th-century [one]. But I retained none of those emails, and we are working with the State Department to see if there’s anything else they want to discuss with me about those emails.”

The emails he sent were all unclassified, mostly “benign,” he said, and probably not important even if they can be recovered.