Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates called Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server while she was Secretary of State, an "error in judgment," during an interview Thursday with Yahoo's Katie Couric.
Gates' time as Secretary of Defense overlapped with Clinton's time as Secretary of Defense during the Obama administration.
"But first, the email controversy. Do you think that was a major error in judgment or a relatively small mistake? Sounds to me, you think the former," Couric said.
"I don't know what originally prompted her to think that was a good idea," Gates said. "I never used email for official business, either as the I (Central Intelligence) Director or as Secretary of Defense. I was afraid somebody would send me an email saying, ‘If I don't hear back from you in two or three hours, I'm going to go do X,’ and I'd be in a five-hour hearing on the Hill. I'd come back, find some government overthrown or something, so I just never used email for business."
"And so, using an offline server, I think was an error in judgment."
Gates is currently the president of the Boy Scouts of America and chancellor of the College of William and Mary.