(CNSNews.com) - Defense Secretary Ashton Carter says he used his iPhone, which has his personal email on it, to send "admnistrative messages" to his office, and he admits he "should have known better."
"I didn't do the right thing," he told a news conference in Erbil, Iraq on Thursday.
While some lawmakers are calling for hearings on the matter, the Obama White House seems satisfied that Carter has "owned up" to his "mistake."
"I haven't spoken to the president about this issue, but I'm confident that after having read about it in The New York Times, the president would agree with Secretary Carter's assessment that it was, in fact, a mistake," Obama spokesman Josh Earnest said on Thursday.
Here's how Carter explained himself in Iraq on Thursday:
"This is a -- a mistake I made with respect to e-mail; entirely my mistake; entirely on me. First of all, let me begin by saying, in fact as secretary of defense, I don't use e-mail very much. I certainly don't use it for classified information, and any work-related e-mail is preserved, as is required.
"But what I was doing that I shouldn't have been doing, until a few months ago, which meant I was doing it longer than I should have -- should have been, obviously -- is using my iPhone, which has my personal e-mail on it, to send messages to my office -- administrative messages; not classified information. And all of this is preserved as a public record as it should be.
"But that I shouldn't have been doing. And I've stopped doing that, but that was a mistake.
"And to get to your question, I mean, particularly someone in my position and the sensitivities about the position should have known better. And there were plenty of people during the time that you're taking office and so forth who explain to you what the rules are about e-mail. So this is -- it's not like I didn't have the opportunity to understand what the right thing to do is.
"I didn't do the right thing. This is entirely on me."
Carter said he stopped using his personal email to send work-related messages "a few months ago."
"And basically, what that means is, I was doing it for longer than I should have."
According to White House spokesman Josh Earnest, White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough found out in May that Carter was using personal email for work-related matters. McDonough told the White House Counsel, who then contacted senior Pentagon officials to relay the admimistration's concerns.
Yet Carter, who took the job in February, says he continued using his iPhone email "until a few months ago."
Earnest told reporters that what Carter did "runs counter to our policy," but he also said, "the consequences of that mistake...do not seem significant" at this point. "I have not reviewed the e-mails myself, and I don't intend to," Earnest said, "but based on what Secretary Carter has said about them, it does not appear that his mistake led to any sort of breach of classified information."
The Defense Department is "prepared to cooperate with legitimate, congressional oversight into this matter," he added.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said it's "hard to believe that Secretary Carter would exercise the same error in judgment" as former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. According to the Associated Press, McCain's committee has requested copies of the emails and will conduct a review "to ensure sensitive information was not compromised."
Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said Carter should ask the Defense Department's inspector general to verify that no classified material was sent over unsecured channels.
Back at the White House, a reporter asked Earnest if other cabinet officials have been using private email to conduct government business:
"Well...to confirm that, you're gonna have to check with the individual agencies," Earnest replied. "The agencies themselves are responsible for administrating their email systems. You know, we've discussed earlier that there is clear guidance that's been given by the administration about what those practices should entail. There's no ambiguity about them.
"I'm certainly not aware of any officials who are currently using their personal email for official government work on a regular basis. But if there -- let me just say it this way -- if there are, this surely is yet another reminder about -- of why that would be a poor choice."
Following revelations about Hillary Clinton's misuse of email, Earnest said it was "pretty evident to anybody who was reading the newspaper or watching cable television that there would be significant negative consequences for an individual who was not in compliance with administration policies about email use. And those negative consequences were largely the risk of being embarrassed publicly for not following those rules."
A reporter asked Earnest, "Secretary Carter is obviously central to the fight against ISIS. Is this too much of a distraction, given how central the fight against ISIS is to the administration?"
"I'm not at all worried about this distracting Secretary Carter from his important responsibilities to protecting the country," Earnest said. "In fact, Secretary Carter right now is traveling in the Middle East meeting with our allies and partners to discuss our ongoing counter- ISIL efforts and to discuss opportunities to intensify those aspects of our strategy that are working.
"I know that Secretary Carter is also devoting a significant amount of time on this trip to thanking our men and women in uniform who are serving overseas doing important work protecting the country, and that is causing them to be away from their families over the holidays.
"And that's -- that also is important work for the secretary of defense to be engaged in, and the news over the last 18 hours or so has not at all distracted him from those important responsibilities."
