Former secretary of state Madeleine Albright told MSNBC’s Morning Joe that she would not allow a deputy to use a private email server for government work Monday.
When host Willie Geist asked Albright whether she would be concerned if an official had used a private email server, she skirted the question. However, she was forced to answer Mark Halperin, who posed a similar question: "If you were secretary of state now and your deputy secretary of state said ‘I want to do all my e-mail on a personal server, on a private email account,’ would you approve that?"
"I would not, no," Secretary Albright admitted. Her response was followed by silence.
Earlier in the interview, Albright said that she did not see Clinton’s use of a private server as a security breach. "I do think that we always have to be concerned about security, and Secretary Clinton has been and will be," she said.
During her time as Secretary of State, Albright was known for being strict about security practices. In 2000, when a laptop with classified information went missing at the State Department, Albright gathered a room of more than 800 staffers and condemned them for the misstep.
"I don't care how skilled you are as a diplomat, how brilliant you may be at meetings, or how creative you are as an administrator, if you are not professional about security, you are a failure," she said.
However, Albright had no problem defending Clinton’s security slip-up.
Public attention re-focused on the Clinton email controversy Thursday when the chief of the National Security Agency said that Clinton’s use of a private server presents an "opportunity" for foreign spy agencies.
Clinton has been attempting to appear more sincere in interviews about the controversy after an August survey revealed that voters associated her name with words like "liar" and "dishonest." She apologized for her actions for the first time in a September 9 interview with ABC News, calling her use of a private email server a "mistake."
However, in an interview with NBC’s Chuck Todd Sunday, Clinton reverted to her original ‘it-wasn’t-me’ position. "All I can tell you is that when my attorneys conducted this exhaustive process, I didn't participate. I didn't look at them," she said.