Former Sec. of State Condoleezza Rice has no recollection of a conversation at a 2009 dinner party where Hillary Clinton reportedly claims that Gen. Colin Powell advised her to use a personal email account.
Rice’s inability to recall the conversation makes her the second person to publicly undercut Clinton’s claim.
Both NBC News and The New York Times reported last week that Clinton told the FBI that Powell offered her the email advice during a dinner party at former Sec. of State Madeleine Albright’s home.
Rice and another Henry Kissinger, another former secretary of state, were present at the dinner party, where the former diplomats were asked to provide Clinton with advice to help her tackle her new job.
Joe Conason, a liberal reporter who is a staunch Clinton supporter, also reported details of the dinner party conversation in a book he is set to publish next month.
According to The Times:
Mr. Conason describes a conversation in the early months of Mrs. Clinton’s tenure at the State Department at a small dinner party hosted by Madeleine Albright, another former secretary of state, at her home in Washington. Henry Kissinger and Condoleezza Rice also attended.
“Toward the end of the evening, over dessert, Albright asked all of the former secretaries to offer one salient bit of counsel to the nation’s next top diplomat,” Mr. Conason writes. “Powell told her to use her own email, as he had done, except for classified communications, which he had sent and received via a State Department computer.”
The identity of Conason’s source is unclear. But according to The Times, he interviewed both Hillary and Bill Clinton for his book.