FOIA request shows NSA refused to give Hillary Clinton a modified BlackBerry like Obama's, so she used her own even though her staff knew the security risks
NSA refused Clinton a secure BlackBerry like Obama, so she used her own — Condaleeza Rice had one, but NSA balked at bulk support State wanted, docs show.
Context & Ripple Effects
This FOIA release fills in the origin of a story that has been building since March 2015, when reporting first revealed Clinton ran official business through a private email server. The documents show the choice was not secrecy for its own sake: Clinton wanted a modified secure BlackBerry like Obama's, but the NSA refused — and balked more broadly at the bulk secure-device support the State Department requested, even though Condoleezza Rice had been issued one earlier.
That refusal matters because the FBI later found 110 emails in 52 chains carrying classified information on the system, and the Washington Post has since traced the scandal directly to her insistence on keeping an impossible-to-secure personal BlackBerry.
First-order effects
- Clinton was left using her own unmodified BlackBerry for official communications while her staff knew the devices could not be secured — the direct cause of classified material transiting an insecure channel.
- The NSA is now on record, via FOIA, as having denied both the individual accommodation Obama received and the scaled deployment State asked for, narrowing where blame for the workaround sits.
Second-order effects
- State Department leadership faces pressure to reconcile why one secretary of state got a secure BlackBerry under Rice but a later request for broader secure-device support was refused, forcing the agency to defend its provisioning criteria publicly.
- The episode hands every future cabinet-level appointee's security team a precedent to argue over: deny the personal device up front or absorb the risk of an unauthorized workaround later.
Third-order effects
- If executive device preferences keep outrunning what security agencies will certify, expect formalized — and politically contested — rules for which officials qualify for hardened hardware, rather than case-by-case NSA discretion.
- FOIA is re-emerging as the accountability tool that converts internal security disputes into public record, shaping how agencies document refusals before they become scandals.
The trend: Senior officials' consumer device habits are colliding with security agencies' limited willingness to certify custom hardware, pushing device provisioning from quiet discretion toward explicit policy.