If you will recall, last June, the media acted as though they were uncovering the greatest scandal since Watergate when they descended on Alaska to read through 24,199 pages of released email communications sent by Governor Palin’s office during her tenure. Needless to say, they didn’t find what they were looking for. The media, quite obviously doing opposition research for their party, requested that the State of Alaska release all of her emails back in 2008. When Alaska released the emails in 2011, the press went into an absolute frenzy. They filmed the boxes in the room, they combed through pages of mundane government business, they put a call out to fellow travelers to help them crowdsource the documents.

They may not have found what they were looking for, but C4P and its readers found plenty of good things that not only verified what we already knew about Governor Palin, but things we knew the media really didn’t want to talk about.

For instance:

This one deals with transparency regarding AGIA negotiations.

http://palinemail.msnbc.msn.com/palinAll/pdf/10234.pdf

So that everyone is clear and we’re consistent , despite what some of the press is saying and already criticizing us for , I WILL release the number and name of applicants tonight, and will always err on the side of MORE transparency, not less, when dealing with applicants and proposals and the public ‘ s expectations that they’ll be privy to all AGIA info (unlike murkowski ‘ s tactic).

This one highlights Governor Palin’s Constitutional principles.

http://www.crivellawest.net/palinAll/pdf/17982.pdf

Hi Talis: a reporter pointed out to me today at least three line items in the capital

budget that sound “illegal” (he even cited chapter and verse of state law) because they deal with funding religious organizations/projects – sounds like Meyer plugged them into budget, incl a Christian school’s request. I told KTUU that Law will look at items before i would ever sign off – and that if they do in fact violate constitution I will veto the items.

On AGIA – Tuesday, April 29, 2008:

http://www.crivellawest.net/palin2011/pdf/14515.pdf

Palin: if Big Oil is just blowing smoke then the Owner State needs to find a way to just do this ourselves. Ideally TC and Denali would get it together, and get together, and get this built. But if this go ’round is just more of the same rhetoric (and quasi-threats), then there’s got to be a way to tap our resources and build our line ourselves.

Her belief in Alaska becoming self-sufficient:

http://palinemail.msnbc.msn.com/palin2011/pdf/17282.pdf

“As for your meeting with Don [Young] and Ted [Stevens] – I just really hope they remember that I am committed to fairness and transparency with AGIA… that we realize how important the gasline is… and that we want Alaska to become more self-sufficient and self-sustaining – one way to do that is to see that the gasline is built. We will not be so reliant on the feds, then we won’t be pressuring Don and Ted for $$$ to the degree we’ve always done in the past. And hopefully they’ll know that Exxon does not have to be such stinkers to us in the press – that Exxon has a duty to develop, etc.”

On keeping the budget under control and reining in spending:

April 13, 2008:

http://palinemail.msnbc.msn.com/palin2011/pdf/13647.pdf

“Budgets grew outrageously the past few weeks, I can not allow this unsustainable spending in both cap and operating.”

Just to name a few.

Today, Alaska released the final batch of those emails. No media frenzy, no crowdsourcing, no pictures of boxes in a room accompanied the release. The AP reported:

Sarah Palin’s final months in office saw her fighting for a signature accomplishment of her tenure — a natural gas pipeline project — and frustrated over a series of ethics complaints that had been filed against her, according to emails released Thursday by Alaska state officials.

In a June 4, 2009, email to aide Katryn Morgan, Palin told her to “push hard to get gasline tweet language today. We MUST give Alaskans their deserved updates on the project.” Just a week later, TransCanada Corp. and Exxon Mobil Corp. announced that they would be working together to advance a gas line project…

Days before she announced her resignation, Palin, in a June 29, 2009 email, told a press aide that there may need to be a statement on upcoming court proceedings related to the person in Tennessee who hacked into her personal email. The response from the aide, Sharon Leighow, is redacted but Palin reacted strongly: “The state is involved- has been since day one- it’s not a political angle. Don’t do a statement then, but know that my staff and Law has been working on this, spending state public time and resources, and the public does have right to know how their public resources are spent, in this case it’s to address a TN hacker’s bad actions affecting us up here.”

Palin’s frustration over a series of ethics complaints filed against her, one of the issues she cited when stepping down, comes through in a series of e-mails on March 24, 2009.

“These are the things that waste my time and money, and the state’s time and money,” she wrote to Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell.

She told her staff to release a statement about the most recent complaint filed by a blogger that said, in part, “Yes, I wore Arctic Cat snow gear at a snow machine event, because it was cold outside. And by the way, today I am wearing Alaska’s own Paige Adams’ jeans and Alaska’s Romney Dodd-Ortland hand-painted clogs. When will I see the ethics charge for wearing these? Now how much will this blogger’s asinine political grandstanding cost all of us in time and money today?”

Now tell me, what other politician could have withstood the scrutiny of having all of their email communications read by not just the media, but people who were looking for a smoking gun. There isn’t one.

Also, I haven’t been able to locate a source to find the emails from the latest release. MSNBC and Mother Jones seems to have abandoned updating their online database for their crowdsourcing crews. If anyone knows of an online source for these files, let us know in the comments.

Update: I took down the link to the AP story (Google it if you need it) because they changed the headline to the piece written by Becky Bohrer from “State of Alaska Releases Last Palin Emails” to “Palin before resignation: I can’t take it anymore.”

Here’s a screenshot of a Google search. You can see the original headline listed for ABC and CBS but the new headline listed for the AP:

They also changed the entire article. You can compare the paragraphs I posted to the ones currently there. It doesn’t read like the same story because it isn’t. I would never link to THAT, much less use it as the basis for a C4P post.

I think it’s clear to see that the press decided that they wanted to play with this email release rather than perform any honest reporting on the matter. The last time they released her emails to the public, they ended up looking bad. So this time they want to control the story. By not releasing the information to the public and holding on to it for themselves, they set the narrative to whatever they want. They can take things out of context, distort, or try to make Governor Palin look weak via a headline that gets passed around by AP’s customers. And they have pages to do this with.

I think it’s time to demand that the media release the emails to the public.

Update II: ADN released the emails here. Time for us to go work.