IRBIL, Iraq — U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter acknowledged Thursday that he used a personal email account to conduct some government business until "a few months ago."
"I should have known better," Carter told reporters traveling with him in Irbil, Iraq, the regional capital of the Kurds. "It's not like I didn't have the opportunity to understand what the right thing to do was. I didn't do the right thing."
The same practice by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, now the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, has drawn criticism and led to an FBI investigation into two emails that are now considered top secret.
Carter said that when he joined President Barack Obama's Cabinet, he was instructed in email security. But he said he used his iPhone to send "administrative messages" from the time he was confirmed as defense secretary in February until "a few months ago." That was "longer than it should have been," he said.
He would not be specific about when the practice ended. The New York Times, which first reported his use of a private, unsecured email, submitted a Freedom of Information Act request for his private emails in September.
Carter said he did not use his phone for "classified information." The Defense Department said all his messages, which appeared to be largely about meetings and speeches, were backed up for record keeping on the department's email system.