hillary clinton phone REUTERS/Stefan Rousseau/pool
Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton once struggled to convince a White House operator that she was on the line, according to an email unearthed Wednesday.

In the 2010 email to her close aide, Huma Abedin, Clinton wrote that she wanted to reach out to a retiring congresswoman but was too distracted by the situation with the operator.

"I'd like to call her," Clinton wrote.

She added:

But right now I'm fighting w the WH operator who doesn't believe I am who I say and wants my direct office line even tho I'm not there and I just have him my home # and the State Dept # and I told him I had no idea what my direct office # was since I didn't call myself and I just hung up and am calling thru Ops like a proper and properly dependent Secretary of State---no independent dialing allowed.

The email was part of an end-of-the-month batch of Clinton communications released Wednesday. Because Clinton exclusively used a personal email as secretary of state, her emails were not initially included in government archives, and the State Department continues to release Clinton's messages on a rolling basis as she campaigns for president.