Tens of thousands of State Department employees around the world received a surprise in their e-mail boxes late Tuesday: The first direct message from their boss ever.

At 7 p.m. EDT, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton became the first chief diplomat to send an e-mail to everyone with a state.gov account, including members of the Foreign Service, Civil Service and foreign nationals working at U.S. embassies and consulates abroad, one of her aides said.

"S" in the signature stands for secretary.

Here is the message:

From: Secretary Clinton

Sent: Tue Jul 14 19:00:36 2009

Subject: Our Foreign Policy Approach

To the tens of thousands of State personnel and partners around the world:

On Wednesday at 1:00 p.m. at the Council on Foreign Relations here in Washington, I will deliver an address talking about our foreign policy approach. I'm sorry you can't all join in person, but I want to invite you to watch live either on the Department's BNET television network or streaming online at bnet.state.gov.

I hope to e-mail you more as time goes on, and I look forward to meeting more of you in person as well. In the meantime, keep up your great work and keep the ideas coming to The Sounding Board!

Hillary Rodham Clinton

(a.k.a. 'S')

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