October 1st, 2008
Palin had '10 to 15' secret email accounts
Somehow I’m not surprised to read that Gov. Sarah Palin has more email accounts. It’s now very well known, of course, that her office operated Yahoo accounts. Someone breached one of the Yahoo accounts, prompting an Internet manhunt.
Now the Washington Post reports (yeah, I know, you don’t believe the Post) that Palin actually had 10 to 15 additional email accounts.
ITS technician Ryan Gattis described working with Bailey this spring to set up e-mail addresses linked to the dormant campaign Web site. Gattis said there appeared to be 10 to 15 addresses, chiefly the small circle of aides known in Alaska political circles as “Palinistas” for their fierce loyalty to Palin, with [Palin aide Frank] Bailey taking system administrator authority.
Quentin Algood, owner of ITS Alaska and a Palin supporter, said a discreet email system was created from the old PalinForGovernor website, which now refers to Palin’s page on the McCain website. Algood said access to these emails was limited to
a group of people, her closest confidants and co-workers and advisers and the person she sleeps with.
The McCain campaign admits the existence of the additional accounts but amazing spins the news as proof of her transparency.
“As a champion of government accountability and transparency, Governor Palin was exercising an abundance of caution to ensure that all state and personal business matters were being kept separate,” said Meghan Stapleton. “Governor Palin is committed to serving with the highest regard toward ethics.
Such spin is nothing more than calling day night. The exposed Yahoo account included “family photos, notes from well-wishers and official state correspondence on pending legislation,” as the Post notes. That shows not a cautious isolation of personal and state business but a willful commngling of the two.
Why so many secret accounts? The accounts were set up this spring, at the height of political turmoil into TrooperGate. The presumption must be that it was part of an attempt to hide communications from investigations into TrooperGate.
The accounts were shut down on order from the McCain campaign the day the Yahoo story broke, Algood said. Ryan Gattis, a technician at ITS, said the accounts have been archived if they need to be accessed.
“They just wanted an e-mail system that they had control over,” Gattis said. He said Bailey also inquired about options for encrypting e-mails but was discouraged by the $1,000 price tag of a commercial encryption product the technician recommended.
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