The Ongoing Saga of Sarah Palin’s Email.
12 10 2009Remember those public records requests for Sarah Palin’s email? The records were requested by citizens, and news outlets as far back as September of 2008. The office of Governor Sean Parnell has just asked for another extension.
“I think they’re hiding something, I think this is a travesty of justice,” state Democratic Party Chairwoman Patti Higgins said Wednesday. “The law says they have 10 days to do it.”
Public records in Alaska are generally supposed to be provided within 10 days, although the state can extend the deadline for more complicated requests.
State officials say this is no cover-up, but rather a case of massive requests that have overwhelmed the state’s resources. Assistant Attorney General David Jones said the 11 largest public-records requests from last year remain unfilled; most of them, he said, require the review of between 2,900 and 30,000 documents.
Our first instinct of course, with anything having to do with the ex-governor that seems to be suspect is to presume that it IS suspect. Using this simple rule, we’re right the vast majority of the time, which is why that’s usually our first reaction. But in this instance, let it be known that Dave Jones, the Department of Law’s Keeper of the Emails is actually telling the truth.
The work of sifting through the emails progresses day after day after day. And the Department of Law is overwhelmed.
So, how then, in this age of advanced technology, can it actually be taking this long to search 30,000 documents? They may want to make you believe that’s a lot of documents, and if you stacked them all up in a pile of paper, it’d be about 10 feet tall, but in terms of the amount of electronic information today’s software can handle, that’s nothing. Then if nothing nefarious is going on, and this could be handled easily in a short amount of time, what’s the problem?
Here’s where we have to imagine a little metaphorical scenario. Imagine if you will, a room with two desks. At one desk sits a young man at a computer work station. He’s got his iPod, and his iPhone and his slick computer setup with a giant monitor, and some really killer software. On the desk sits a bag of jalapeno chips and a Red Bull. He cracks his knuckles. He’s contestant #1.
About 20 feet over, out of the glare of the overhead fluorescent lights sits another desk. This one is of the wooden roll-top variety. Hunched over in the chair is a tired man. An old man. He wheezes a little, and coughs into a handkerchief. On his desk is a ledger, and an inkwell. He looks down his nose through the half spectacles and squints in the candle light. He is contestant #2.
The object of this competition?
Find the following information:
• All e-mails between Palin and state Rep. John Coghill, R-North Pole, or between Palin and state Sen. Fred Dyson, R-Eagle River, with the words “abortion” or “AGIA,” which is short for the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act.
• All e-mails from Palin containing the following words: babysitter, childcare, McCain, Obama, Democrat, Huckabee, Wal-Mart, Eskimo, Natives, Kuwait, passport, Ruedrich or Kopp.
• All e-mails between Palin and her husband, Todd, with any of the following words: vote, veto, budget, oil, Monegan or Wooten.
• All e-mails between Palin and her sister, Molly McCann, with the words Wooten or Monegan (referring to figures connected with the so-called “Troopergate” affair.)
Let the games begin.
(Time passes)
We rejoin the contestants a few days later. Contestant #1 is reclined in the chair, feet on the desk, keyboard in his lap, tapping on the keys. Ear buds in his ears, he’s jamming to something the rest of us cannot hear, and occasionally we hear a soft high-pitched singing. There’s still a can of Red Bull on the desk, but we now notice a couple more cans, crumpled on the floor. There’s a mostly empty pizza box on the desk. Suddenly he sits upright, feet on the floor, and clicks the mouse. He pumps his fist in the air. After taking a victory spin in the chair, contestant #1 grabs his iPhone and his iPod and his jacket and is out the door.
We look over at contestant #2, who stares in disbelief at the empty desk where our victor recently sat. His own desk has a large stack of papers on the left side. It measures about seven feet tall. On the other side of the desk is a pile of papers that measures about 1/2 inch tall. We realize that contestant #2 is taking papers one at a time off the giant stack, looking them over thoroughly, scanning for specific words with the aid of a magnifying glass, and eventually moving them to the top of the smaller stack, and painstakingly making notations in the ledger. This guy is going to be here a looooong time. And he’s going to need a whole lot more candles.
I’ll give you one guess which of our contestants is the State of Alaska. You guessed it, it’s the guy mopping his brow and looking up at the remaining nine feet 11 1/2 inches of paper. The State of Alaska does not have the software to do the job. What they do have can’t remove duplicates, can’t run word searches for “hot” terms, and can’t cluster similar emails. This entire project is being done MANUALLY.
Now, in the State’s defense, it probably didn’t think it would ever have to deal with these types of requests. How could it possibly have foreseen the nightmare that was the Palin administration, and all the fallout that would ensue? And to equip the Department of Law with the proper software is expensive. And we’d all like to think that we’ve learned a few things, and won’t have to go through this again. They think they won’t get the return on their investment, and we all hope they are right.
But , this raises the real question. Why hasn’t this work, like much of the State’s legal work, been farmed out to a private firm that has the software, a dedicated server and contract attorneys to do the work? This kind of work could be charged by the amount of information being processed, rather than by the hour, and would likely be far less expensive than having a team of “Bob Cratchits” with pens and ledgers and candles doing this work manually for over a year.
The contract attorneys would be dedicated to this one job until it was done. They would not be subjected to being pulled off the job to work on other things like state employees are. And the contract attorneys would be subject to the same confidentiality as the attorneys in the Dept of Law. Everything is still privileged information. According to attorneys in the know, it’s a pretty typical solution for any sort of legal issue involving huge amounts of electronic documents such as these. With better software, the work could be done relatively quickly. 21,000 emails is nothing when you have good software and experienced people, and would take days or maybe weeks to complete, but not over a year, with no end in sight.
So, why when the State is clearly unable to handle this type of request in a timely manner, and why when cases like this are routinely farmed out to those who can handle them quickly and are subject to confidentiality, is this being done manually by attorneys within the Department of Law who Jones claims are being pulled away from other projects?
October 13th, 2009 at 6:36 PM
Not that what I have to say is particularly important.
There is no excuse for not delivering the requested emails in a timely fashion, any decent email agent deployed since 1998 would be able to perform the necessary search and retrieval in a matter of a few minutes in the hands of a competent user.
Reviewing the emails is another matter but it leaves the question, is there any legitimate reason to review them? This was aired somewhat earlier but it seems that any claim of privilege would be dubious at best. Does the current administration have any justification at all for redacting any portion of the requested emails? It they do Ak. is in deep trouble because the best reason for redaction is to hide malfeasance.
IANAL so what follows is certainly subject to skeptical review by knowledgeable persons.
It seems to me that if one has no redress with the state and is being stonewalled, the logical course of action from a legal view point is to escalate the game. File suit in Federal court against the state. Now, admittedly, since I have no knowledge of this procedure or how to initiate it or who would have standing, I will gladly refer to others in this.
However, from what I have seen in the comments so far, the response to this issue is confined to interested parties far flung but ineffectual, and local parties perhaps intensely interested but without the means to take further action. This is unsurprising, it is one of the things those in official positions depend upon to remain unexposed. However, the logical thing to do at this point would appear to make the story go viral and expand to the national
blogosphere. If nothing else it will pull in lots and lots of expertise from across the board who can help move things forward.
There are plenty of places that this can be aired in commentaries that might get the attention of bloggers.
Need I supply talking points?
I would suggest one more thing though and that is that AKM should make a new posting that is a call to action. Though it is important to inform, it is often timely to offer some direction.
If you want the emails, get organized, get busy and go get them.
October 13th, 2009 at 7:03 PM
KN~
I agree that WE must take action…and that, before all the media hype surrounding the release of palin’s propaganda. It would appear that Parnell and many others were indeed privy to the many palin deceptions and cover-ups long before she made her hasty exit….and since the MSM is choosing to ignore the real story here, citizen journalists must organize and force full disclosure and accountability.
For those of us who have been closely following this sad saga….there are far too many things that just don’t add up ~ and the obstacles are blatantly obvious.
October 13th, 2009 at 7:43 PM
Sorry, AKM, just not buying it. I’m sure that’s what your source “said” but he or she is misinformed or has been deliberately misled. Good luck to the AKns in pursuing legal action (joining with the Dems or AP or the ACLU or whomever). The key is to get the hard discs seized and frozen before any more shenanigans take place. Unfortunately, I suspect “aha” is correct in that the out-of-pocket cost is too high to allow all but the most highly motivated parties to file for legal redress. And that’s the point of the whole exercise, as many have stated. Subvert the whole idea of FOIA through obfuscation and delay. And Celtic Diva’s request was filed long after the ones AKM has written about above, so hers may fall to the bottom of the pile if they handle them chronologically. However, she is the only one who has ALREADY paid, so she has the best case for disputing the delay and should be able to ask for interest on the money or some other penalty. Too sad, the legacy of Madam Winky Quittypants.
October 13th, 2009 at 7:44 PM
Krubozumo Nyankoye:
It could be in the national interest for Palin’s emails to be disclosed, especially if she became a national candidate (especially if it turned out the text of her emails revealed ugly things). Too bad this issue is being fought primarily in our obscure little wilderness called Alaska with little or no Outside help. This is a big deal. We need to know the truth about Palin, and she and her cronies don’t seem to want to disclose the truth. Her upcoming book is no substitute.
It seems the Parnell administration, come hell-or-high-water, doesn’t plan to release Palin’s emails.
In another matter, they have made statements to me where they used the umbrella of executive privilege to justify their secrecy and denial of requested information. After reading those carefully worded excuses again, and after reading how they used similar wording elsewhere in similar denials, I think they may be planning to claim Palin had used candor in many of her communications, and those communications should be protected from public disclosure– Parnell and DOL may claim she wouldn’t have been able to effectively communicate without her candor, and therefore she would have been restricted from being able to perform her executive duties if she had felt restricted from using candor.
That’s just my guess– I think that is where we may be headed, and that is what they may say, if this all ended up in court.
October 14th, 2009 at 1:07 AM
The ”Peasants” (Michael Moore’s ‘Capitalism A Love Story’) have no legitimate right to question their rulers. Lest you believe otherwise, politicians are but prince’s to the royal court of the Presidency. How else can Rangle ”mistake” his disclosures and ”underestimate” his assets, and ”overlook” the IRS tax code (which he oversees) so blatantly for years on end with seeming impunity.
In case you don’t believe it, APOC, the AG, Personnel Board, AK Legs, and those AK Legs are beholden to on either side of the party line, and especially the McCain campaign, have been rubbing your Alaskan faces in it for years…please wake up.
I read, here, all the time how people call on the Fed as if that entity were the Creator, himself. Well, neither the Creator nor the Fed is coming to help, so get over it.
Is it a wonder countries eschew the Democratic experience and Capitalism, in general? People see what’s going on. Thank the Heavens for PJ Bloggers. Wasn’t it funny the other day, Obama etal were talking about bribing Afghans and the Taliban to support our interests since bullets don’t seem to work so well? Let’s woo them with our devalued dollar, but the opportunity to overrun your neighbor still exists, here, in the land of plenty…lol…just don’t get sick and if you do, just die, quickly, thank you kindly.
If you can’t beat them join them. The only way to effect change is to run for office and hope by the time you get elected your resolve is still intact. Hope the process hasn’t overtaken you by the dark side. It’s obvious you will only be listened to if you are one of them.
We need someone poor to run for office, since it’s painfully obvious anyone with the money to initiate action, who could act has no intention of doing so…I know many people are acting behind the scenes in unreported ways, but think of them as splinters, when what is needed is a blunt force object.