Palin's (Functional Equivalent of an) Email Cover-up
| Tue Oct. 7, 2008 2:00 PM PDT
By using at least one private email account for state business, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has virtually guaranteed that most of the emails she sent as governor--which are subject to the state's Open Records Act--will not be publicly released before Election Day.
After Senator John McCain, the GOP presidential nominee, picked Palin to be his running mate, a number of news organizations, including Mother Jones filed Open Records Act requests for copies of emails Palin had received or sent. (For a comprehensive list of all the requests received by Palin's office, see here.)On September 22, in response to the Mother Jones request, Palin's office replied that it would cost $2,249.46 to conduct a search of her official email account. This did not include copying fees. The fee was later reduced to $590.06. But money was not the issue.
Palin has used at least two private email accounts in addition to her state account. That posed a serious challenge to the record-keepers in her office: how to find the emails to and from these accounts. The information managers had easy access to the emails she generated and received with her official account. But they did not have access to a Yahoo account she used for official communications and another private account she might have used for state business.
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In a September 25 email to Mother Jones, Linda Perez, the administrative director of the office of the governor, noted:
We are unable to access records from the non-state email accounts as we are not the account owner or customer of the providers. My access to copies of emails sent from (or received by) private accounts would be through the state email accounts that sent or received emails to or from the private accounts.
To retrieve those email messages, we could expand our email search to include other state employees' email accounts and run a sub-search on those email accounts' incoming and outgoing emails to identify those that include particular words, i.e., particular private email addresses or individual names or subjects.
Perez noted there would be an additional charge of $960.31 for each state email account searched. And, she said, there were 68 email accounts within the executive offices of the governor. That meant Mother Jones would be charged $65,000 for a search seeking emails between Palin's private accounts and the official email accounts of officials and employees within the governor's office. In other words, Palin had essentially placed her emails beyond public scrutiny for anyone unable or unwilling to pay a large sum.
In response, Mother Jones replied, "This search is necessary only because the Governor decided to conduct state business on a private email account." It asked that these onerous search fees be waived in the public interest, as the Open Records Act allows. Ten days later, Perez informed Mother Jones that the governor's office was returning its initial check for $5690.06 and that there would be no fees at all for any of the searches regarding Palin's various accounts. It was not "appropriate," she said, to charge requesters for locating Palin's official emails: "It is our responsibility to get these collected in one location." And she said that her office had worked out a two-step plan for responding to the requests for Palin's emails.
First, the governor's IT team would search state accounts for emails sent to or from (or CC'ed to) Palin's private accounts, and these records, once found, would be lumped together with the easy-to-retrieve emails sent to and from Palin's state account. Next, all of these emails would be printed out and sent to the state's Department of Law, which would review each one and decide if any should be withheld. After that, the non-withheld emails would be released--with requesters being charged copying fees. (Palin's office says the rate will be 29 cents a page.)
How long might this take? Perez said the computer experts in the governor's office figure that they need about two weeks--starting this week--to conduct the search to find Palin's private account emails. And how much time will the subsequent legal review require? "I can't even begin to estimate," Perez said, with a sigh.
The math, though, is obvious. The search will likely produce thousands of emails. A review could easily--and justifiably--take two weeks or more. That would mean no release of any of Palin's emails until after all the votes are cast in the presidential election. (Palin's office presumably could begin a review of the emails to and from her official account right away and possibly finish that before the election.) And this process will not capture any emails relating to official business that may have zipped between Palin's private accounts and the private accounts of other state officials. "We don't have access to the stuff," Perez noted. She said that it may be possible to retrieve emails from a private vendor--such as Yahoo--but that she did not know what might be available and under what conditions such emails could be requested.
The bottom line is that Palin appears to have benefited from her decision to conduct state business using private channels. As governor, she has touted the need for accountability and transparency (even though she has withheld about 1100 emails involving her aides, citing dubious justifications). But because Palin used one or more non-state email accounts for official communications--perhaps improperly--she has created a costly mess for her administration's information officers and a situation in which emails from all her accounts will likely not become public before November 4. If her emails contain any information that might not reflect well upon Palin, the McCain-Palin campaign need not worry. Palin, wittingly or not, has engineered a delay that is the functional equivalent of a cover-up.
Comments
Isn't there a war or two going on, costing people their lives & livelihoods, that we ought to be putting some effort into getting the candidates to talk about??
A defacto "Empire" that's bankrupting this nation, both Monetarily and Morally?
Oh, that's right.., there's precious little difference between what "Their" candidate and "Our" candidate actually says, on those rare occasions that they blunder and blurt out something specific.
So our 'Free Press', rather than annoy their buddies with tough questions, happily goes about presenting bullsh!t about the candidate's families, their various church ministers, and how they spend their money.
Folks, FORGET the distracting nonsense MoJo and their pals in the media want you to focus on, and demand REAL answers on REAL Life & Death Issues!! Or else admit that you're content to go on being spoon-fed the "no substance" caliber of candidates and issues you've been getting for the last 40 years.
Submitted by Eric Ferguson (not verified) on Tue Oct. 7, 2008 3:42 PM PDT.
What If They Gave A War, you clearly don't get why this matters. This exact sort of secrecy was what allowed the Bush administration to hide the intelligence that contradicted the sales campaign for Iraq, and it's this same secrecy that makes it hard to investigate human rights abuses and contracting fraud. Palin's coverup may be merely on a state level, but it's the same behavior, and being exhibited by someone who could become president.
If you don't know precisely what I'm referring to, I remind you that the bushies either "lost" or won't disclose e-mail from the time they sold the Iraq invasion.
Eric Ferguson, I do understand all those talking points. I just don't buy into them as "The Crucial Issues" of this election.
What I truly Don't Get is why we allow ourselves to be distracted from the questions we ought to be demand answers on.
Tell the truth here, Eric. The intelligence was not 'hidden' by anything Bush did or said. It was there for those who had ears to hear. Commondreams.org was well aware of it,
www.commondreams.org/views04/0301-01.htm
And tried to make the point that John Kerry (and others) had every reason to know about it before their 'Yea' votes, and act on it accordingly.
The fact that there WAS contradictory evidence available is proven by the fact that SOME in D.C. voted 'Nay', despite the tremendous pressure exerted by the leadership of Both wings of our single party.
What we need to be examining is whether the candidates rhetoric on really crucial issues matches their actions.
Don't get sidetracked, or accept the trash you'll get if you do. And don't try to make mountains out of molehills, and molehills out of mountains.
Submitted by William W. Wexler (not verified) on Tue Oct. 7, 2008 8:46 PM PDT.
I am not trying to diminish this issue in the least, because it is part of a critical problem that we need to solve in order to clean up our government and restore accountability.
However, in Palin's case, this one is going to take care of itself because she's never going to get anywhere near the WH, unless she leads a secret life as a high-dollar hooker in her post-goober-nat-oreo career.
Palin/McCain is crashing and burning... the major markets are losing money at a rate of trillions per week and the GOP can't duck this one... no sirree Bob. This albatross came back to life just long enough to lean over McCain's pot belly and poop in his Wheaties.
-Wexler
Palin fits right in with the Roves of the world.
* Palin is a liar,
* Palin hides her crimes from public view,
* Palin refuses to turn over information that IS subject to "Open Records LAWS" - citing "executive priv." ...
* Palin encourages her husband and her staff to IGNOR subpoenas - again citing "exec. priv."
* Dick Cheney is her ROLE MODEL
* Palin stole $25,000 of tax payer money and refused to claim it as income. The IRS might not like THAT!
* Palin lies and distorts the truth WILLINGLY, KNOWINGLY AND WITH FORETHOUGHT for the sole purpose of inciting RIOTS.
* Palin's husband has so much disdane for the United States of America that he belonged to an anti-America group for 7 LONG years.
What else do we know about this Palin - who has only been at this job for "5 weeks" - Do we really KNOW enough about her and HER past to let HER be one heartbeat away from a 72 year OLD man?
What is the status of the emails that were not released by Palin from state accounts that were cc'd to the first dude? Doesn't the fact that he is not a state official make those emails open to the public? This was mentioned several weeks ago but I have not heard why these haven't been followed up. Anyone?
This works perfectly for John McCain. His disdain for Obama is obvious. Logically his disdain for Palin should be even worse. This inexperienced, unsophisticated newcomer that knows nothing as a VP? Drawing larger crowds and more popular than him? Now if a real legal conflict comes up after the election, he will have a valid reason to "dump Palin" and nominate his buddy Lieberman for VP, thereby sticking it to the conservatives and Evangelicals he loathes!
Seems to me that if Palin was using a public e-mail system for "official" business then those e-mails would not be subjected to a review by the state's lawyers. If, in fact, there was "classified" information in any of the e-mails sent through these public accounts then she has made a serious breach of the security of her state's business and should be held accountable for that. She cannot have it both ways. The e-mails from the Yahoo accounts should be obtained directly from Yahoo via a court order.
What form of an idiocy is this?! I build email systems for a living; I've _never_ ever heard of a more ridiculous or specious reasoning ever in my life than this.
How transparently cynical do they have to be before you Americans revolt against this shit?
Alaska's Attorney General, appointed by Palin, refuses to investigate charges that Palin has been violating the Alaska law regarding official communications.
A kid has the talent and gumption to obtain and expose evidence of Palin's guilt, so he gets indicted by the U.S. Department of "Justice."
American government is broken at all levels. Perhaps it is time to convene a Constitutional Convention and consider dissolving what is fast becoming a criminal enterprise.
Submitted by Women Speak Out On Palin (not verified) on Wed Oct. 8, 2008 10:25 AM PDT.
To see real videos of real women discussing their reactions to Sarah Palin & the misuse of gender issues in this year's presidential race, please take a look at the following blog (& forward to all your friends, family & open-minded folk at large): www.speakoutonpalin.blogspot.com
David, maybe you can answer a question on this that has been really troubling me. If officials are subject to records laws, and they choose to use private accounts for (some of their) state business, why isn't that a crime just on its face? It's clearly nothing more than an attempt to get around the law. With the White House, too, shouldn't it simply be that if you use private accounts for this, you're guilty of a crime? Is that the law? If you have time, thanks.
At this point it is just sad to watch the desperation in McCain and Palin's speeches as they struggle to ignore the obvious, Obama is going to win by a landslide. I only hope that there is a camera as McCain drops to the floor and screams and yells and kicks his feet while he screams" I am suppose to be the winnner, not that colored guy". McCain is just looking too sad to believe. Poor deluded John McCain, he will never figure out why he lost the election. He is, indeed, a tool.
Why hard copies? Why all the delays and expense, not to mention waste, of printing out thousands of e-mail messages? Why not send a digital file?
And as for Palin -- the lies, the secrecy, the cronyism and hypocrisy -- she's Cheney without the warmth and charm.
So here's the real stinking moment regarding all those emails...
If an average schoolkid took the time to "figure out" the governor's password, then you cannot tell me that the spoofer would not download that entire mailbox before posting a single thing with screencaps online. That just smells, to quote David Letterman.
Perhaps I am now just too cynical after 8 years of crap, but I fully believe that once the McCain guys showed up in Alaska and found out Sarah was sending government emails to/from her Yahoo account, they smelled huge trouble. This was a method to get the mailbox locked up under an existing investigation even after it was all deleted (which they quietly did rather than just changing the password!?!) Now nobody can get into it because of the "crime". Not bad, you gotta admit.
What have we heard of this since then, BTW? The kid got his laptop taken by the feds and questioned. Anything else? Nope.
New laptop, no worries. Anybody ask how this kid got her YAHOO address anyway? This kid's psychic powers to figure out both her address and its security question are pretty amazing. In fact, extremely amazing. Almost like it would have to be provided or something.
And the screencaps needed to be the ones with no damage at all, no spin necessary, only upstanding governmental/ wholesome family stuff here.
Smells too much like orchestration. I know how much inappropriate spam gets into my Yahoo account. Yet strangely none there. And absolutely no open emails? Again, if you look at the outside of an envelope, will you get prosecuted (if you are thinking like a Washington lawyer)? If you are some punk kid who bothered to spoof into a mailbox, you won't actually open any of the mail? C'mon! Give us some credit!
2 weeks?
I do document gathering and searches all the time.
Palin has been in office for 20 months, but only actually showed up FOR 85 WORK DAYS. During the same period the state legislature was in session for 168 DAYS.
Even if this small time period is not still on their desk tops and servers, going to backup tapes, in their control, should not take 2 weeks.
Preservation of public records (preservation of Evidence) is the first concern of any public agency. It is the primary concern for anyone who believes in accountablility for government.
Rumors from mole.
Sarah Palin's yahoo accounts have been copied and the copies are in the hands of state officials (which state officials I have no idea).
Sarah Palin's official state email account was basically empty with no subfolders or anything. She didn't use it much (something like 20 emails).
The official state blackberry server had a flurry of activity of unencrypted Sarah email leaving her blackberry/state account and forwarded to a yahoo account (don't know which one, don't know what date).
Not necessarily. In the indictment, the emails themselves are not the crime. The victim does not need to be further distressed by allowing perusal of the box itself. The guy's own screencaps suffice for evidence if they can be fully traced to him.
He is charged with one criminal count, which is accessing the mailbox only. Everything else is described, but the only charge is access. So that's all the government has to prove, assuming it makes it to court at all.
(As coincidence, he turned himself in today when charges were unsealed. He is pleading "not guilty". Story just popped up on the feeders.)
I know not really a big deal, but what's up with McCain wandering around the stage while Obama was talking last night? How totally rude was that? I found him to be childish in the extreme and so wanted someone to ask him, when he said for the umpteenth time "and I know how to do that" then how come you haven't yet? God, he thinks we're idiots, and Palin thinks that sparkly smiles and winks and stilleto heels are going to get somewhere with the undecided (women) voters?
Palin thinks that sparkly smiles and winks and stilleto heels are going to get somewhere with the undecided (women) voters?
Certainly not heterosexual ones.
I think Sarah knows full well that it's guys who are going to respond to that.
HOW CAN GOVERNOR PALIN EVEN BE CONSIDERED FOR THE VICE PRESIDENCY WHILE SHE IS BEING INVESTIGATED FOR POSSIBLE ABUSE OF POWER; THE INVESTIGATION IS ONGOING, AND SHE HAS NOT BEEN CLEARED OF THE CHARGES? I DO NOT UNDERSTAND THIS. DID JOHN MC CAIN KNOW WHE WAS BEING INVESTIGATED WHEN HE SELECTED HER AS VP ON THEIR SECOND MEETING?
The reason McSame chose Sarah is he is a womanizer and she was the best looking person to chose for VP. Check out this article in Rolling Stone. http://www.rollingstone.com/news/coverstory/make_believe_maverick_the_re...
Marjorie L. Jennings shouts: HOW CAN GOVERNOR PALIN EVEN BE CONSIDERED FOR THE VICE PRESIDENCY WHILE SHE IS BEING INVESTIGATED FOR POSSIBLE ABUSE OF POWER; THE INVESTIGATION IS ONGOING, AND SHE HAS NOT BEEN CLEARED OF THE CHARGES?...
I believe, Marjorie, that Richard Mildew Nixon proved that you can be under investigation for far more serious crimes than this, and still beat a Democratic Senator from the upper Midwest by a 49 State landslide.
Will it happen this year?
I doubt it. But who's to say that after Obama takes office in 2009 that he, himself, won't be exposed for dirty-tricks, crime-riddled politics?
That IS the general history of Chicago Democratic politics, after all...
re sparkly smiles and winks
No, I'm not dense, but apparently others are. I guess it's hard to do tongue in cheek in print. But anyway, she seems unable to grasp that a significant proportion of the undecided voters are women, and a significant number of male undecided voters live with women (who have a lot of influence with those males), many of whom were and are deeply offended by a woman who has so little substance, she has to resort to smarmy tactics to get votes. One wonders - particularly in light of how affairs are being handled in Alaska - how far she would go to get what she wants.
this woman hasn't even held a real press conference or reputable interview and has not been subjected to questions like the rest of the candidates to date and the election is less than one month away.
This is ridiculous. The media should be slapped. Completely doing us a disservice. I could care less about her emails. Ask the woman real questions about domestic and foreign policy issues in an open forum.
The more you attack Sarah Palin who did NOT vote for a war and did NOT vote for a BAILOUT and who is just an ambitous working class stiff who made good, the more you send angry independent voters her way. Think about this after election day if not before.
We ALL know that Palin was a campaign "Circus Stunt"! It was a totally DESPERATE move by a DESPERATE and FAILING campaign.
What this "strategy" reveals is how incredibly "Irresponsible" that McLiar is! His first "executive" decision and he comes-up with Sarah Palin????
McLiar loves to tell Obama that he doesn't know the difference between a "strategy" and a "tactic". But it is obvious that he himself has learned the hard way.
A "tactic" is what George Bush's political operatives used to smear McLiar in the 2000 campaign.
A "strategy" is hiring those SAME political operatives to run McLiar's campaign today!
BE A SUCKER FOR THE RICH...........VOTE REPUBLICAN!
Submitted by Chico Brisbane (not verified) on Thu Oct. 9, 2008 9:25 AM PDT.
It's amazing that it took all of 10 minutes for some college kid to hack into Palin's yahoo email, but it will take "computer experts" 2 weeks starting this week.
Absoulutly amazing
So when you read the indictment, it says that the online poster used a familiar posting name, known to be associated with the son of a democratic lawmaker. That person immediately turned himself in and has pleaded not guilty.
Nah, this isn't orchestrated at all! We even get to blame dems for hacking now AND the emails are still locked under evidentiary control. Too good.
I trust none of it.
Don't worry about whether it's after or before the election. Just go after her emails and get them all out in public.
If getting Palin's emails were a real matter of justice, the DOJ would and could get all of her emails via the NSA spying system. But we all know the Bushies are not at all interested in any kind of real justice that uncovers one of their own. This is St. Reagan's eleventh commandment.
It's amazing that it took all of 10 minutes for some college kid to hack into Palin's yahoo email, but it will take "computer experts" 2 weeks starting this week.
Absoulutly amazing.
That simply illustrates the difference between somebody working on the government's payroll with government officials looking over his/her shoulder, and a motivated individual working freely and unhindered in their own interest.
The one situation results in a motivation to drag feet, the other results in a motivation to get results.
"It is moose hunting season here in Maine. Hope Palin doesn't mistake the tottering old, PTSD "maverick" too far from the herd and aim!"
Let's see Sarah shoots a caribou, an elk, a moose, whetever it is; and her family eats for another day. While others have only to shoot their mouths off and...show their ignorance. Which is more fruitful?
Should Governor Palin actually be using her personal email during time she is at the office? Don't we have a record of her schedule. A supeona of personal email would entail those emails sent using her Yahoo account at times that she was officially "on the clock" That would indicate which emails would be fair game wouldn't it? Also, any emails sent from or received on her computer at work are fair game for any inquiries aren't they? After all, the computers at work are the property of the people of Alaska, not Sarah Palin. Yes, she should have privacy for any emails sent from her home computer on a personal account when she was not scheduled to be working on government business. After all, we don't need to look at all the moose pictures she sends to friends.
Why are you Progressive
Submitted by Vancelot (not verified) on Sun May. 10, 2009 12:45 PM PDT.
Why are you Progressive Communist Liberals SO SCARED OF SARAH PALIN ? You are such fair journalists, report the baddest Liars, Cheaters and Theives.
DEMOCRATS!!!Sarah did all the things you hold dear, beat the oil companies; ran wascally wepublicans out ; and yet you slam her. You are biased. You are not on the people's side. You really suck.
Why are you Progressive
Submitted by Vancelot (not verified) on Sun May. 10, 2009 12:49 PM PDT.
Why are you Progressive Communist Liberals SO SCARED OF SARAH PALIN ? You are such fair journalists, report the baddest Liars, Cheaters and Theives.
DEMOCRATS!!!Sarah did all the things you hold dear, beat the oil companies; ran wascally wepublicans out ; and yet you slam her. You are biased. You are not on the people's side. You really suck.
why is this always coming up
Submitted by dedicated game servers (not verified) on Sun Jun. 28, 2009 7:08 PM PDT.
why is this always coming up the republicans. they are always crooked.
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