WASHINGTON — Almost no one at the State Department was following regulations to archive their e-mails when Hillary Rodham Clinton was overseeing the agency, according to a report released Wednesday.
The agency’s inspector general found that under Clinton’s watch as secretary of state — between 2009 and early 2013 — department employees routinely ignored their obligation to ensure that official e-mails were saved.
In 2011, employees created 61,156 so-called “record” or archived e-mails out of more than a billion e-mails sent — roughly .006 percent.
In 2013, they preserved even fewer, just 41,749.
Figures for 2012 were not examined.
“Some employees do not create record e-mails because they do not want to make the e-mails available in searches for fear that this ability would inhibit debate about pending decisions,” the IG’s report states.
Department guidelines say that if an official writes a letter or e-mail that pertains to the agency’s official operations, that message is legally considered a record that must be preserved.
Douglas Welty, a spokesman for the IG’s Office, said the timing of the report’s release was “purely coincidence” and that it took time to compile the data.
