McCain And Palin Personally Approved Email Hunt For Leaks

The Plum Line:

John McCain and Sarah Palin both personally approved an intensive internal search of the emails of top campaign staffers in order to determine who had been leaking damaging information about Palin to reporters, McCain campaign manager Steve Schmidt just told me in an interview.

"John McCain and Sarah Palin were both informed that we were doing this in an attempt to catch the person," Schmidt told me, referring to his decision to undertake the email search, which has been the topic of fierce controversy since it was revealed yesterday.

Read the whole story: The Plum Line

Comments

[Phoebe917]

funny how no one is disputing what was *in* the emails.

[DestinationsUnknown]

foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann had been busted and disciplined for leaking about the campaign.

what - didn;t that Russian Georgia ploy work for the lobbyist of Georgia?

Too bad your missile defense fizzled too

[AZterritory]

Wouldn't it have been easier to find people who WEREN'T leaking info.?

[SharpDressedMan]

Good luck with that. Every organization deals and struggles with leaks.

[SharpDressedMan]

People need not dramatize this kind of search. It's not intrusive or in violation of privacy. Employers routinely scan emails and other forms of communication. Courts sided with employers in such matters.

[Didactic Curveball]

Gotta love the fringe benefits of the Patriot Act.

[jsgaetano]

It's more than likely they used MS Exchange. Assuming that...

You can't just search users email. You need to export the entire data store, then search all the individual mail boxes.

The claim that administrators just did a "keyword search" and it magically gives you the results isn't how you do things in MS Exchange.

As usual, conservatives come up with realistic-sounding excuses which are just babble to anyone who actually knows what they are talking about. The same thing applies to all their "trickle down" economic beliefs as well.

[SharpDressedMan]

Good email systems have accessible email databases and backups. Searches at network and administrative levels are possible so employers can monitor emails.

But I don't disagree with your depiction of hype expounded by conservatives.

[jsgaetano]

MS Exchange, and other systems, do it this way specifically to protect the privacy of the users (as well as the confidential data which may be contained in the emails).

"Good" email systems don't allow quick and easy searches of the email database. I'm only an expert on MS Exchange, but I can't see other ones being designed much differently- otherwise, one rogue admin can get access to anything they want.

[brt929]

I'm no IT person, but even I know if I was going to leak information, would I be so stupid as to use the main server, or even use email at all?

Come on, how stupid is that?

[cindyw]

I'm thankful every day that these two never made it to the White House, but I think it's to be expected that a campaign would like to know who's leaking damaging information. I don't see what the big deal is. I imagine Obama would have wanted to know if someone was leaking, but fortunately, his campaign turned out to be leak free.

[lagumbo]

Good for John McCain and his sidekick. McCain gave up his interegity, and honor to be come president. He knew after the first few weeks that he had made a mistake with picking Palin. Did he
reverse his call, he could have. But no, he continue on, and in the process he used Palin to raise
the false acquzations that OBAMA was a muslim, that he was pallin around with a terriosts, he heard people at his rallies calling for the beheading of OBAMA, and he did nothing about. He tried to color Palin as a subsitute for , thinking she could pull in the Clinton votes. He lied to his followers, and tried to suck in the voters with someone he knew wasn't qualified, wasn't educated enough, and didn't have a brain in her head. John McCain and Palin should be ridiculed the rest of their lives.

[Didactic Curveball]

Yes. McCain lost all remaining credibility with the way he handled his campaign and used Palin as the "face" of the hate he quietly espoused himself.

[brt929]

He made a great concession speech, but since then he has shown he holds a grudge and he goes after Obama every chance he gets.

[GrandGuignol]

While the real professionals worked hard to get McCain elected, Todd Palin was calling donors and telling them to hold their money for 2012. That type of cheap opportunism doesn't inspire loyalty.

[SharpDressedMan]

I remember that. Todd is also good at using phones to get back at a state trooper and to raise money from Arctic Cat.

[jsgaetano]

But according to Sarah's buddies, there was nothing wrong with that.

[Rain-man]

Palin and McCain back together again!
What happened the last time these two weinies, I mean winners, worked together?

[Decipherer]

I think you mean whiners?

[CalculatedRiskTaker]

Hey John, how does the Patriot Act feel now? Got someones nose up your @$$ you don't want there?

[PoliticalAmazon]

Just desserts. How sweet it is.

[Jakealoper]

What petty little people.

[DawnK]

You know people like Palin keep alluding to Obama being a socialist but the actions taken to hunt down the dissenter well, that sounds like good ol' communism to me.

[Ladyrantsalot]

Wow, if this is what they are willing to do in a mere political campaign, imagine what they would have done if they had gained the White House and anyone dared to criticize their actual political policies.

[GetRidOfWires]

VERY well said.

[Didactic Curveball]

What's a little invasion of privacy if it could possibly save Sarah's image.

Vomit.