NEW YORK
Hillary Clinton on Tuesday defended her exclusive use of a personal e-mail account to conduct government business as U.S. Secretary of State.
"Looking back it would have been better to use separate phones and two separate e-mail accounts," she told reporters at the United Nations in New York.
Clinton, who many believe will be the Democratic Party's 2016 presidential nominee if she decides to run, said she used private e-mails "as a matter of convenience," adding that other officials have also used it before.
During her tenure at the State Department from 2009 to 2013, Clinton did not have a government e-mail address, according to The New York Times, citing State Department sources.
Prior to Clinton's news conference, which overshadowed a speech she had just made on gender equality, the State Department announced the agency would release 55,000 pages of Clinton's e-mails after a review.
Federal officials' correspondence is considered government records under federal law.
Clinton said she made all her e-mails about work available to the State Department but discarded thousands of personal correspondence such as those about her daughter's wedding and her mother's funeral.
She said she and her staff evaluated what would be considered private e-mail when the State Department asked for records of her correspondence.
"I have absolute confidence that everything that could be in any way connected to work is now in possession of the State Department," she said. "I have no doubt we have done exactly what we should have done ... I think we have more than met the request of the State Department."
The majority of her e-mails related to business had been "automatically saved" because they were in correspondence with persons having formal e-mail addresses ending with ".gov," she said.
She added that the content and details of the server she used for her e-mail account would remain private.
