Boxes of emails from former Alaska governor Sarah Palin are missing one month. (Wayde Carroll/REUTERS)
As first noted by the Anchorage Daily News, no emails appear between December 6, 2006 and December 30, 2006. The gap begins two days after Palin took office. It is not in the redacted log, meaning the emails were not removed for legal or personal reasons. They were simply never part of the release.
“I’ve asked the Enterprise Technology Service, who did this search for us, to recheck their criteria and give me some suggestion as to why they’re missing or what they can do,” said Linda Perez, administrative director for Palin’s successor, Gov. Sean Parnell (R).
The blank spot emphasizes the incomplete nature of last Friday’s email dump. Palin frequently used a Yahoo account for work-related purposes, and she maintained other private email accounts. Only some of that traffic was captured and recorded by the state. If she included someone on a state email account in her Yahoo correspondence, for example, it was recorded. If she was emailing only with other private accounts, those emails were not released on Friday.
During the undocumented month, Palin’s office was far from dormant. She announced her plans to sell the state jet on eBay, a decision that later made it into her 2008 GOP nominating convention speech. She appointed an attorney general. She canceled plans for a road out of Juneau and released her first budget proposal. Palin vetoed a bill that would have denied benefits to same-sex couples. There is some email traffic on that subject, with the headline “same sex,” that is completely redacted.
"There definitely was email traffic going on at that point,” said Frank Bailey, a former Palin aide who recently published a scathing book about his one-time boss. “There was discussion about same sex benefits in that month, there was Todd's involvement in a lot of cabinet appointment positions."
As part of the release, there were no emails sent by Palin herself until Dec. 30th, 2006, and the first one seen is sent from Palin’s Yahoo account. An early email to Palin’s “government sponsored” account from a state official got this response from one communications staffer: “This is a ‘public’ address for the Governor, it is not one that she has access to,” wrote Michelle Fabrelio, Palin’s coordinator for constituent relations. The official responded that she would use Palin’s personal address.
Palin did have access to a personal government-sponsored email address in addition to the one given out to constituents. She used that account throughout her tenure alongside private email addresses. On January 10, 2007, the first email from her official govpalin@gov.state.ak.us account appears. The message, from Palin to Chief of Staff Mike Tibbles, says only, “This is the Governor's private email account.” It appears to be a test.
The governor’s office says that Palin would have been given both a personal official state account as soon as she entered office. There is correspondence from other staffers on state accounts before January 10th.
