New Email Release Shows Colin Powell Advised Clinton on How to 'Get Around' State Department Security with Private Email

House Democrats have released an email exchange between Hillary Clinton and former Secretary of State Colin Powell in which he extensively advised his successor on how to use personal email and devices.

The exchange, released late Wednesday, shows that Clinton reached out to Powell two days after she took over as secretary of state in 2009. "I hope to catch up soon w you, but I have one pressing question which only you can answer! What were the restrictions on your use of your blackberry?" Clinton asked Powell. "Did you use it in your personal office? I've been told that the DSS personnel knew you had one and used it but no one fesses up to knowing how you used it!"

Powell responded by telling Clinton he didn't use a BlackBerry but detailed how he used his own personal computer to communicate with friends and "do business" with foreign leaders and senior State Department officials who had personal email accounts.

"What I did do was have a personal computer that was hooked up to a private phone line (sounds ancient). So I could communicate with a wide range of friends directly without it going through the State Department on their personal email accounts. I did the same thing on the road in hotels," Powell wrote.

Although Powell apparently remained unconvinced that there was any real harm in using personal devices from a national security standpoint, he warned Clinton: "However, there is a real danger. If it is public that you have a BlackBerry and it it government and you are using it, government or not, to do business, it may become an official record and subject to the law… Be very careful. I got around it all by not saying much and not using systems that captured the data."

Clinton previously told FBI officials investigating her use of a private server that Powell had advised her to use a personal email account. After The New York Times reported that last month, Powell told PEOPLE, "The truth is, she was using [the private email server] for a year before I sent her a memo telling her what I did."

"Her people have been trying to pin it on me," he said.

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Clinton's use of a private email server during her time as secretary of state has dogged her throughout her presidential campaign. The exchange between Clinton and Powell was released by the State Department at the urging of Democrats on the House Oversight Committee, who argued it should have been part of earlier email document releases that Republicans in Congress had pressed for.

Rep. Elijah Cummings, the top Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee who released the email exchange, said it "shows that Secretary Powell advised Secretary Clinton with a detailed blueprint on how to skirt security rules and bypass requirements to preserve federal records, although Secretary Clinton has made clear that she did not rely on this advice."

"If Republicans were truly concerned with transparency, strengthening FOIA, and preserving federal records, they would be attempting to recover Secretary Powell's emails from AOL," he added, "but they have taken no steps to do so despite the fact that this period – including the run-up to the Iraq War – was critical to our nation's history."