Good morning, or good evening if you are in the US, and welcome to the Guardian's continuing coverage of the release of tens of thousands of emails from Sarah Palin's time as the governor of Alaska.
The hard work of trawling through the 24,000 pages of emails – supplied by the Alaskan governor's office as printouts rather than in their original electronic form – kicked off after their release on Friday and without delay our team began scanning them.
Follow our live blog of the key developments as the Guardian attempts to identify and collate the most interesting emails with your help.
Guardian journalists in Juneau, Alaska, have been combing through the thousands of Palin emails as fast as they can read and have already fished out nuggets shedding light on the Alaskan reign of the woman who may yet become the US Republican party's challenger to Barack Obama in 2012.
Stay tuned with our full Palin email coverage on the site – and on Twitter follow the latest developments at our special feed @gdnpalin.
We'll be rounding up all the latest developments from the US media coverage and around the web right here. As always, you can take part by leaving your comments below. I'll be tweeting at @BenQuinn75
Here's a summary of what's happened so far:
• More than 24,000 pages of emails from Sarah Palin's time as governor of Alaska were released on Friday to news organisations including the Guardian in the state capital, Juneau.
• The Guardian is scanning and posting copies of the emails, and is inviting readers to help trawl through the archive and flag up interesting entries.
• The list of redacted emails itself runs to 189 pages, and Alaska state officials say they don't expect any "smoking guns" to be found within the email archive.
• Palin has responded with a statement from her political action committee saying: "The emails detail a governor hard at work. Everyone should read them."
• The emails reveal debates within Palin's administration into issues such as Troopergate and decisions to allow oil exploration in previously protected areas of Alaska.
For readers wanting to delve into the trove of emails, the Guardian's full coverage is here. Our data editor, Simon Rogers, explains how it all works here.
The Guardian's Ewen MacAskill is one of the journalists in Juneau, from where he has just filed on how the release of the emails has provoked a backlash from grassroots conservatives, who are accusing major US newspapers and the Guardian of engaging in a vendetta against the former Alaska governor and possible presidential candidate. Here's a taste of that story:
Conservatives bombarded newspapers, rightwing websites and other media outlets with complaints that Palin had been singled out for special treatment and that other politicians were not being subjected to the same level of scrutiny, in particular Barack Obama.
Greta Van Susteren, a Fox News journalist and one of the few members of the media trusted by Palin, labelled the treatment of Palin "a media colonoscopy" and suggested some news organisations were on "a mission to destroy".
That view was shared by her blog-readers, one of whom wrote: "What a sad time in America when a good, decent God-loving, America-loving and family-loving person is under attack by so-called journalists."
The email releases have produced fresh insights into Palin's character and leadership while governor of Alaska but no revelations so far that would damage a bid for the Republican nomination for the presidential race.
Let's look at how US news outlets have been covering the release of the correspondence, from when Palin took office in December 2006 to her ascension to Republican vice-presidential candidate in September 2008.
This is from the Associated Press, which was among the news organisations that requested the release of the emails:
In the months before she became presidential nominee John McCain's running mate, the emails showed a governor dealing with complaints, rumors and gossip about her family. In several, she asked about the identity of someone who alleged that she had not buckled her son, Trig, properly into his car seat.
In another, she lamented about gossip about her family and marriage. Palin and her daughter Bristol appeared to be travelling in a car and Bristol emailed a Palin staffer in July 2008: "Mom and I were just praying about the hurt and anger that comes with her job. Thank you for your faith in God.
"We share it and we love you!" Bristol wrote, from her mother's personal email account.
The emails portrayed Palin as a close reader of news accounts, wanting to correct things she believed to be or were in fact wrong. "Will ktuu (an Anchorage TV station) and adn (Anchorage Daily News) be corrected re: the 'internal investigation'? I did not request it, as they are both reporting," she wrote in a 13 August 2008 email.
After she was elevated to the national ticket, news organisations began vetting Palin's record. She was accused of essentially turning over questions about her gubernatorial record to McCain's campaign managers, part of an ambitious Republican strategy to limit any embarrassing disclosures and carefully shape her image for voters in the rest of the country.
On 13 September 2008 her then-spokesman, Bill McAllister, wrote to Palin at her government account: "Governor, got your message just now; didn't quite understand. Mike said yesterday to refer most things to the campaign. That pretty much has been the practice lately."
On 15 September 2008 Palin responded to a host of news media questions presented to her by McAllister. Among them was one about a tanning bed at the governor's mansion and whether it was her "belief that dinosaurs and humans co-existed at one time?".
"I am so sorry that the office is swamped like this! Dinosaurs even?! I'll try to run through some of these in my head before responding," Palin wrote. "And the old, used tanning bed that my girls have used handful of times in Juneau? Yes, we paid for it ourselves. I, too, will continue to be dismayed at the media."
On 17 September 2008 Palin forwarded a profanity-laced email from a man claiming to be a Juneau resident from her government account to two aides.
"You need to be shot from one of the planes that shoot th (sic) very wolves that you ordered," according to the email. "I own guns, and will fight any gun owner hands down witha (sic) simple throwing knife, how about you palin ,,,want to go hunting for wolves still? lets make you run in your heels ..." She also got another threat from someone in Belgium.
The emails show the support that national political figures gave Palin on a variety of issues. Former house speaker Newt Gingrich offered advice to a McCain-Palin campaign manager on how to blunt the impact of a September 2008 Washington Post report that she accepted $17,000 in per diem payments for time she spent at her Wasilla home.
Gingrich said the campaign should elaborate on its initial defence that Palin didn't charge the state for money she could have collected to spend on her kids.
"This should be brought into a single number childrens (sic) days not charged equals $X that palin did NOT charge the taxpayers for that she was legally entitled to," Gingrich wrote. "Offsets 90 per cent of the story's impact."
Emails show that Palin was involved in the running of the state, including priorities like a natural gas pipeline from far northern Alaska and ceremonial duties such as attending funerals for soldiers, giving speeches to trade groups and having bill-signing events.
Palin wrote in March 2007, two months before the legislature passed the bill, that one of her top pipeline aides "will craft a letter for VP Chaney (sic) to edit - it shall be supportive of our agia process. (We'll see where Chaney's (sic) edits go, ultimately, but at least he took me up on the offer to voice his support of agia anyway.)."
Her official calendars show that she spoke with Cheney about the pipeline in January 2007.
Msnbc.com is also hosting an archive of the Palin emails, co-sponsored by Mother Jones magazine and Pro Publica. Here is a taste of what they have posted:
When the Alaska legislature appointed investigator Stephen Branchflower to look into possible ethics violations by Governor Palin's role in the "Troopergate" case, the Palin administration's response was to spread rumours about his wife to attack his credibility.
In a series of emails on 1 August 2008 the governor and her aides discussed how to respond to the inquiry. The conversation is heavily censored. The current governor's office withheld most of the email thread. But the progression is clear. It starts with the subject line, "Fw: Branchflower," with questions posed by the Anchorage Daily News, which asked whether the Palin administration's planned to co-operate with the investigation.
The content is mostly marked "privileged or personal material redacted". Then Palin changed the subject line to "Re: Fairness?: Branchflower." We can't see what the governor wrote. Then the governor changed the subject line again, to "Re: MRS.: Fairness?: Branchflower," with this message from her Blackberry and her Yahoo account gov.sarah@yahoo.com: "Just got another call about Mrs Blanchflower [sic] having retired after working FOR Walt at APD and the conflict involved there."
Walt is apparently Monegan, whom she dismissed in a dispute that began with Palin family difficulties with a state trooper who was Palin's former brother-in-law. Press aide Sharon Leighow replies, "I dropped all sorts of questions about linda," referring to Branchflower's wife, "... licence lasping [sic] ... Walt association etc." Palin replied again from her Blackberry, "Thank u."
A reader, Stephen, has been in touch this morning to draw our attention to an interesting email shedding light on Palin's approach to filling seats on official boards.
After Ivy Frye, Palin's then director of boards and commissions, asks for final decisions on bodies including a Children's Trust and Alaska Workforce Investment Board (AWIB), Palin replies:
youth seat should obviously go to young people who have been supportive and on the same page with my agenda from months ago until now - we don't have to put strangers on that commission or any other when i'm still being told we have hundreds who have offered to help and have been there from the beginning."
Fry also appears to be instructed by Palin to ask her husand, Todd [aka Alaska's self-styled 'first dude'[ for guidance:
"i won't know the AWIB - ask todd and clickj and tara or whomever has been working on those names for the bd"
Here's a snippet from the New York Times:
Few could have been more surprised than Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska when Senator John McCain picked her as his running mate in 2008.
"Can you believe it!" she wrote in response to a staff member's "Wow governor" message that Friday in late August when the choice was announced. "He told me yesterday — it moved fast! Pray! I love you."
Not two days earlier, Ms Palin had been dealing with the sometimes mundane matters of one of the nation's least populous states: a ballot initiative on mining, thorny personnel issues involving her ex-brother-in-law, and her personal request for "Alaska pins and governor pencils (or pens) to drop off at gladys wood elem school today after my afl cio speech."
Elsewhere, commentators in the media have been scrutinising emails making it clear that Palin was angling for the slot months before John McCain asked the then little-known Alaska governor to join him on the Republican party ticket as the his vice-presidential candidate in August 2008.
The Associated Press reports:
Earlier that summer, Palin and her staff began pushing to find a larger audience for the governor, wedging her into national conversations and nudging the McCain campaign to notice her.
Palin and her staff talked excitedly on 19 June about plans to repeal Alaska's fuel tax. Ivy Frye, a longtime Palin aide and friend, said she would send details to McCain staffers when they became available.
"They're going to love it!" Frye wrote. "More vp talk is never a bad thing, whether you're considering vp or not. say President Palin sounds better tho..."
The glimpse into Palin came in more than 24,000 pages of emails released Friday from her first 21 months as governor. They showed a Palin involved closely in the day-to-day business of the state while trying to cope with the increasing pressures that came with her rise from small-town mayor to governor to national prominence.
They also revealed that Palin, as the newly minted Republican vice-presidential nominee, was dismayed by the sudden onslaught of questions from reporters, especially one about whether she believed dinosaurs and humans existed at the same time. She also dealt with death threats, and at least once, she prayed for strength.
A reader, Ben, draws our attention to another Palin email illustrating the type of loyalty that she enjoyed from some staff during her reign in Alaska.
In fact, as this email shows, one went so far as to tell a colleague that Palin's gifts were inspired from on high.
Railing against "accusations of mis-communicating (again!)" with the state's legislature, the staffer writes:
"I mean Steve, she's the governor. She's a natural, God Given communicator."
We're looking at a number of interesting emails referring to discussions between Palin as Alaska governor and Tony Hayward, who was BP's chief executive and went on to become one of the most publicly vilified figures in the US for his stewardship of the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.
That incident has overshadowed a previous 2006 pipeline oil spill in Alaska, for which BP subsequently agreed to pay millions of dollars plus interest to settle a US federal investigation. Quite a number of readers have been in touch with us to draw our attention to an email released on Friday from March 2007 that appears to show Palin recommended her sister for a seat on a BP Benevolent Giving Board.
In it, an Alaskan government staffer asks Palin for any recommendations to the board, adding:
They're looking for someone from the Valley to decide which charitable organizations in the Valley should receive appropriations.
Palin replies:
My sister. if not her, then a missionary friend of mine - i'll get her name.
Many of her admirers have long styled her as the ultimate political manifestation of the Hockey Mom (Palin preferred to describe herself as a Mama Grizzly).
So it's interesting to come across an email showing that at least one angry constituent - and possible hockey mom - in Alaska was unimpressed with the then governor's commitment to funding facilities for young players of the game.
Thank you for sending your reply letter today. You stated "my budget goals have been very clear". However, I still remember your statement (before you were elected, and here's the rub) that you would support a state of the art sports complex, said when you were at an Aces hockey game.
As far as your promoting "world class education", I guess you aren't interested in retaining students after graduating. You'd rather see them leave the state and go to Universities with better facilities.
This is NOT going away. UAA has the WORST facilities in the nation, what a shame. As
Governor, you should be ashamed.
Back again to the potentially thorny issue of appointments to state boards, and one reader, Dan, draws our attention to an email potentially shedding new light on Palin's decision to hire an old schoolmate, Franci Havemeister, as agricultural secretary.
The hiring was the subject of some controversy, amid suggestions that Havemeister was underqualified for the role.
When the New York Times ran a story on the issue in 2008 it noted:
A former real estate agent, Ms. Havemeister cited her childhood love of cows as a qualification for running the roughly $2 million agency. Ms. was one of at least five schoolmates Ms. Palin hired, often at salaries far exceeding their private sector wages.
In this newly released email from May 2007, Palin writes that her former school mate was "at a good time in life with kids graduating ... ready to re-join workforce" and that Havemeister had decided to consider taking Palin up on her "request for assistance" after reading news coverage about the Alaskan milk processor Matmaid.
i told her I'd talk to Tom, find out what's needed, where she'd be needed, and we'd work with her on where to plug her in. hardworking, very supportive and trustworthy ... life-long alaskan very familiar with farming issues. has real estate license, has run a couple of businesses over the years. my age.
Readers are continuing to email in their suggestions for which parts of the Palin correspondence should be highlighted, while Twitter is also alight with discussion
Here's a selection of tweets:
From @stevenbroom
@gdnpalin Will the Guardian be publishing all of your reporters' emails to avoid you looking like tabloid hypocrites?
From @danielledisano
@gdnpalin It seems Sarah Palin was a conscientious governor. Who knew? http://t.co/vxpYsCR #palinemails
From @corrie_hulse
Fine @guardian you win. Curiosity got the best of me and I am now following @gdnpalin :/ #palinemails
From @arionian
@gdnpalin staffer has odd reaction to questions about her attendance at an event on personal time http://t.co/InXUirA #palinemails
From @fruithelmetcat
@gdnpalin #palinemails shows she's a supportive Mom http://t.co/YOVfu8F
From @sleemol
@gdnpalin Palin on bloggers and media comms strategy http://t.co/BKTfMRt #palinemails
My colleague Laura Oliver, who has been keeping an eye on the energetic debate below the line, has rounded up a few choice tweets and comments. On subjects ranging from hot tubs to Alaskan state troopers and wolves, she gives this rundown:
Given what's happening now, interesting detail about a leaked email in 2008. Thanks to Twitter user @hilaryngray for pointing this out.
Thanks to one of our eagle-eyed reviewers Jack C for spotting this email from Erika Fagerstrom about replacing a hot tub for Palin. Unfortunately we can't see the response to this question:
"What type of tub would you like - whirlpool, soaking or just a regular tub?"
Reviewer Margot D picked up on this email sent by Palin following a meeting in July 2007 with Alaskan troops posted to Kuwait
"The #1 request I got from Alaskan troops in Kuwait was for an extension of hunting season - this is the second moose/caribou season they have to miss bc of the Guard's deployment timing. I told them … that I'd do ALL I could to let them fill their freezers this year."
Reader Paul W emails us pointing out a discussion of wolves and the predator problem in Alaska, written by Palin in March 2007:
"We have to act quickly on this as predators are acting quickly and rural families face ridiculous situation of being forced to import more beef instead of feeding their families our healthy staple of Alaskan game. Nonsense. Unnaceptable - and not on my watch."
Laura also credits sharp spotter Susan H with alerting us to some interesting discussions between Palin and staff about the role and responsibilities of her security staff.
I told security I will not be using their service to drop Willow off in the mornings, We will not let any open door to potential, perceived abuse of the privilege of having Security provide that service (...) know that I will be using Security less and less - and continue not to use house staff - to squash unnecessary speculation and criticism.
The second page of this correspondence is here.
While we're continuing to sift through suggestions, here's a grab from a story that my colleagues Ed Pilkington and Ewen MacAskill have filed from Juneau, Alaska.
They have identified some emails shedding new light on how Palin has sought inspiration from a heavenly source.
While Alastair Campbell rather famously insisted that Tony Blair's administration did not "do God", the emails suggest that the Alaskan governorship of Sarah Palin took a very different view.
Ed and Ewen write:
In an email written in March 2008 she said that she had been praying for direction over the financial negotiations. "I have been praying for wisdom on this ... God will have to show me what to do on the people's budget because I don't yet know the right path ... He will show me though."
The former Alaskan governor's deep religious beliefs are well known. She is an evangelical Christian who belongs to the Assembly of God in her home town of Wasilla, a church whose congregants have been known to speak in tongues. She famously referred to the oil pipeline she had supported in Alaska as "God's will".
But rarely has such a direct connection been drawn between her faith and her policymaking. Her call for divine assistance in drawing up the budget is reminiscent of the controversy that followed George Bush's statement shortly after the invasion that God had advised him to attack Iraq.
Over on the west coast of the US, the Los Angeles Times has been updating its coverage of the Palin emails. Kim Murphy writes that Palin was perplexed at the public outcry after vetoing $268m in projects approved by legislators in Alaska's $3.6bn 2008-09 capital budget. Backers of a number of school building projects were among those complaining the loudest:
Fire stations, emergency services and road improvements also got the axe. One unnamed official said she was "stunned by how many school projects were actually cut", reported Karen Rehfield, director of the Alaska Office of Management and Budget.
In a series of wounded emails, Palin administration staffers made it clear they thought they should have been congratulated for their fiscal discipline. Palin was mad that the account in the Anchorage Daily News failed to mention that some of the projects had been only partially cut, or moved up to the following year's budget.
"Man, we struggle with getting the reporters to 'get it,' … I need to concentrate more on writing the story for them so they don't miss the point," Palin said in an email to her budget directors. "I'm proud of what we did through this process," she said.
One really wonders what Sarah Palin herself is making of the media attention her emails have garnered in the last 48 hours – particularly their treatment at the hands of the "lamestream media" (one of her favourite monikers for the fourth estate).
She has certainly tried to delay their release. But according to one email that was brought to our attention by a reader in New Zealand, it's apparent that she has always been prickly about uncontrolled releases of information.
An email from Governor Palin to a staffer reads:
Sharon - who all is on our media press release recepient list? I'd like to see who received, for example, yesterday's presser we sent out right before 5pm re: Conoco's response.
There's something odd about a very vocal critic of our press releases and speeches – the
person must receive the pressers before the general public sees them – because this critic
posts them and spins our content into something negative everytime ... and they're able to
do this before the presser even gets printed or reported on in the mainstream media.
Thanks
Michael D Shear of the The New York Times has been blogging the media's treatment of the Palin emails and what has been achieved in the last 48 hours by organisations including the Guardian:
The result? After a day of frantically poring over the correspondence, with the help of millions of online readers, there were no major revelations but plenty of attempts to dissect the background of a woman who might yet run for president.A review in the morning of websites for news organisations and major blogs found that most gave the story prominent play, with large headlines and, in some cases, multiple articles.
Shear comes up with one exception:
Fox News, where Ms Palin is a paid commentator. The network's home page offered one link to its article with the headline "Palin E-Mails Reveal Harsh Scrutiny After VP Pick". It came above an article about a fight on an airliner and below one about Turkish preparations for elections.
We are closing up this live blog for now but full coverage will continue here.
In the meantime, Andrew Gumbel in Los Angles has been preparing a big read for tomorrow's Observer, in which he assesses, among other things, what the release of the emails will mean for Palin's political ambitions:
Does any of this matter? Will these latest leaks affect Palin's presidential chances either way? The question may be moot, since her presidential poll numbers have been consistently low and sank even further in a CBS News survey last week in which Republican voters opined, by a 20-point margin, that she should not run. Even Tea Party supporters, her bedrock constituency, think she should stay out of the race for the White House.
If the email leaks do anything, they are likely to act as a reinforcement to the widespread perception, even among her supporters, that there is something unseemly and excessively visible about her whole public persona. Joshua Green, who wrote a long and fascinating profile of her for the June issue of The Atlantic magazine, likened her reputation in Alaska these days to that of an ex-spouse from a stormy marriage.
"She's a distant bad memory," he wrote, "and questions about her seem vaguely unwelcome". It may be that the rest of the country – other than the news media, who can't wait for her next stumble – is tiring of her also.
The email dump has been many things: an irresistible window into the inner world of a prominent politician, an exercise in public voyeurism, and something of an experiment in digital-age journalism as the emails have been posted and sifted by reporters backed by small armies of citizen volunteers. Could this also be the moment, though, when the great Sarah Palin beanfeast hits saturation point?
I'm just signing off now but in this morning's bid to shine a light into the innermost workings of Sarah Palin's governorship perhaps we have overlooked one email in particular–- and it's not even from her.
In a September 2008 email to Palin, staffer Alexis Rivera writes to the governor, under the subject line: 'BBQ at my house manana with the Strange Boys playing!'
BBQ at my mansion manana from 6-I OPM to celebrate Preston surpassing 10,000 friends on MySpace.
The Strange Boys (http://www.myspage.com/thestrangeboys) are playing (at 7:30 sharp!), so tip the kids, and bring beef, tequila, and condoms.
The answer from Rivera's boss amounted to one line:
Donna-did you mean to give this to me?????
Follow the latest developments on our new live blog here.
