Former Secretary of State Gen. Colin Powell has released a strong statement of denial after a hacker known as Guccifer threatened to distribute "very personal" emails sent to him by a female Romanian diplomat, the Smoking Gun reports.
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In a statement addressing his relationship with Corina Cretu, a member of the European Parliament who previously held a series of senior posts in the Romanian government, Powell, 76, wrote that he has known Cretu for about 10 years, having first met her “when I was the Secretary of State and she was an assistant to the President of Romania. We occasionally attended the same diplomatic and international meetings.”
Powell, who served in President George W. Bush’s cabinet for four years, said that he kept in touch with Cretu, 45, by e-mail after leaving the State Department in January 2005. “Over time the emails became of a very personal nature, but did not result in an affair. Those type of emails ended a few years ago. There was no affair then and there is not one now,” Powell added.
Powell issued his statement (a copy of which can be found here) to TSG after a reporter sought to question him about the content of Cretu’s 2010 and 2011 correspondence, which was posted online this week. “This note responds to a series of posts placed by a ‘hacker,’” Powell wrote.
Read more at the Smoking Gun.
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