Hillary Clinton's tenure as Secretary of State was twice concluded with a recommendation of no charges, a recommendation that was followed by the Justice Department, but according to Clinton herself, the emails matter and the way in which it would not go away contributed to her electoral defeat. Hillary Clinton's tenure as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton served as the 67th United States Secretary of State, under President Barack Obama, from 2009 to 2013, overseeing the department that conducted the Foreign policy of Barack Obama. She was preceded in office by Condoleezza Rice, and succeeded by John Kerry. She is also the only former First Lady of
Hillary Clinton's tenure as Secretary of State administration, with a variety of assessments being produced. A prominent mid-July speech to the Council on Foreign Relations reasserted her role; she said, "We cannot be afraid or unwilling to engage. Our focus on diplomacy and development is not an alternative to our national security arsenal." In July 2009, Clinton announced a new State Department initiative, the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review, to establish specific objectives for the State Department's diplomatic missions abroad. The most ambitious of Clinton's departmental reforms, it is modeled after the Defense Department's Quadrennial Defense Review, which Clinton was familiar with from her days on the