dan metcalfe was the head of the office, guiding agencyies on how to request information. welcome to the show. >> good afternoon. >> just off the top, sir, why do you think secretary clinton used the private e-mail server period? >> well i probably should caution you right at the outset that it's not just the server. that actually was a secondary step that she took. the first step was when it came to using e-mail itself just in general, she used exclusively a personal e-mail account as opposed to an official government e-mail account. that's point one. secondly when she did that she didn't take the steps that the government says should be taken in the exceptional circumstance in which there is resort to a personal e-mail account. the rule is that you should use the official e-mail account, but if you're a busy secretary of state responding to crises around the world in the middle of the night, sometimes you can't grab that device so readily. so there is some flexibility as a practical matter to allow a personal account to be used occasionally. when that happens, the step i

host: joining us now is stand metcalf. -- dan metcalf. he is the former founding director of the information and privacy. good morning. as far as her former job, can you tell us about this office and what it does? guest: it is something that we established in 1981 to do for primary things. one is to handle litigation. two is adjudicated administrative appeals taken from the freedom information act. third was to handle classified information appeals on behalf of the attorney general. we staff that. but primarily, we gave government wide policy advice and guidance for the administration or implementation of the freedom of information act. that involves writing a lot of guidance memoranda, conducting training, employing a hotline that was available to all federal employees. we were the ones that had to tell everyone responding to the freedom of information act request that all 100 federal agencies what was the right thing to do and what was the wrong thing to do. host: you are responsible for making sure that information can get out does get

host: joining us now is stand metcalf. -- dan metcalf. he is the former founding director of the information and privacy. good morning. as far as her former job, can you tell us about this office and what it does? guest: it is something that we established in 1981 to do for primary things. one is to handle litigation. two is adjudicated administrative appeals taken from the freedom information act. third was to handle classified information appeals on behalf of the attorney general. we staff that. but primarily, we gave government wide policy advice and guidance for the administration or implementation of the freedom of information act. that involves writing a lot of guidance memoranda, conducting training, employing a hotline that was available to all federal employees. we were the ones that had to tell everyone responding to the freedom of information act request that all 100 federal agencies what was the right thing to do and what was the wrong thing to do. host: you are responsible for making sure that information can get out does get