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7.27.2009

UPDATED: Anatomy of a potentially scandalous cover-up...

Yes, I was personally horrified that all links to Sarah Palin's vitriolic and targeted press releases to exact "fair play" or the threats of potential lawsuits against progressive Alaskan bloggers including Shannyn Moore and Linda Kellen-Biegel, seemed to have vanished entirely from the SOA (state of Alaska) website! Who wouldn't be? Keep in mind that those bloggers here in Alaska are merely expressing their first amendment rights in the form of "freedom of speech" by blogging about the alleged abuses of power and ethical complaints against Sarah Palin in her official capacity as Governor of the state of Alaska. With that principle in mind I went to the sites I like to check every day to read whatever new crazy thing is designed to attack us bloggers. I went to the official State of Alaska website and got a shock that I feel should rock us all to our very core.

I went to the SOA (state of Alaska) site because in some way I kind of expected the sort of underhandedness I discovered therein. Call me a cynic. I'll gladly wear that badge with pride. But at this point I can't help but get the feeling that my fears are being proven correct with each and every step along the way of my personal investigation. I feel that many, many important public records have seemed to have gone missing from the official governor's website today (7/27/09) and I think for good reason. Allow me to present the Google Cache and search evidence.

I'll explain why exactly these documents are important. First and foremost, since they were issued as press releases on a state owned website, they are supposed to be public records. As such they should be preserved in toto for the sake of history and full disclosure. Often times Sarah Palin's "official" press releases of the past took the tone of a "mean girl" high school rival, filled with vitriol and suggestions that "fair play" be exacted by Alaskan supporters of Sarah Palin against Alaskan bloggers, an ugly idea openly expressed by her chief of staff, Mike Nizich. Try browsing to the official SOA website here. Dumps you right into a blank page from the present S.P. v. 2.0 (Sean Parnell) page, doesn't it? Now click on the underlined press release link from this page at the "Palingates" website...

Hmmm. Not working anymore is it? All links to official documents are broken and dump you back at S. P. v. 2.0 's main site or essentially a blank page. Why do I feel this is an important development in what I feel is a possible cover-up? Because these documents could be the very basis of future lawsuits against her and certain members of her staff (Mike Nizich, Ivy Frye, &tc. et. al.) to prove both libel and slander on their part. Without them we have to rely upon anecdotal evidence or what is referred to within the legal community as either "dictum" or hearsay. I feel this is a sinister development and is nothing less than Palin and her minions still implanted deeply within the Parnell administration to prevent the prosecution of potential future rightful and justified lawsuits. Even if one were to enjoin a lawsuit against her or Parnell and declare that these documents are both important and ESSENTIAL to prove their case, one would come up "snake-eyes" or empty-handed even through a lawfully ordered judicial discovery process. Were your lawyer to demand through the discovery process that they "produce the documents", they won't and can't because they appear to have been scrubbed entirely from the records archive. They are virtually shredded without explanation or any justification whatsoever!

This is possibly best classified as "obstruction of justice" and would be frowned upon by just about any reasonable judge (again, in my opinion) as being a deliberate destruction of important public documents on the part of a plantiff (potential and future in this hypothetical instance as no one has yet to file a suit against her or members of her administration). It is wrong, wrong, oh so VERY wrong and is potentially deeply criminal. Lets look at the captured images from my search as I lay out the case.

We already know that the cynic in me prompted a visit to the official website. First I pulled up the main page, it's link and captured image is above. Hmmm. Everything looks like a smooth transition to the new administration thus far. Next I went to the governor's main page. Whups! Problem. which prompted me to dig deeper. Where are all the press releases from Palin? I can understand Parnell wanting a clean break and separation from the special brand of vindictive "crazy-sauce" often offered up by Palin in her not so recent past, so I "rubbed some dirt on it and walk[ed] it off" before digging deeper. Though as soon as I saw this page (at left), I knew I was going to need a much bigger shovel. Why? Because I immediately got a bad feeling that informed my senses "I betcha they buried the Palin press releases so deep that I may have to dig all the way to China to unearth the truth". I feel that I wasn't wrong. Thankfully the state of Alaska website has a built-in search tool powered by Google. Ahh, Google! Light of justice and all that is good and powerful on the web. Well, mostly. I expect that after this blog post they'll remove this tool, which by the way would be a travesty and further proof that the Parnell administration has no desire to conduct government business in an open and transparent manner... but I digress.

Next, I type in what you see in the picture at right in the address bar of Firefox. I searched for "Palin press release" + "bloggers". This is a very powerful way to narrow your search to specific quoted items found within pages on the web. The quotes allow Google to look for exact matches to the terminology you input, instead of stupid crap like "Moms who wear jeans like their daughter's jeans" as the Microsoft ad promoting their search engine suggests. From my past experience as a corporate buyer of bulk computer parts for upgrades, I can narrow a search like a shark mounted with a "frikken' laser" on its head. You don't get the cheapest and most available parts as a reseller by typing generic search terms into a powerful search engine like Google by using inexact terminology. You want the exact info for which you search, most especially if you're doing it on the boss' dime and looking to turn a profit from your opportune online discoveries. But again, I digress -- enough with my search engine skill bona fides. Let's look closely at the last image as I break it down a bit. In the blue highlighted line that says "Search" you can clearly see my search items, now scan down and look at the actual URL, the line in green that gives the actual address to the documents for which I actually was searching. Make a mental note of the "&ersand;type=1" at the very end of that line. It's important. Why? Well it is a classification for the internal SOA (state of Alaska) website as to the specific type of classification assigned to a document by their webmaster. While I am certainly not privy as to how they classify their documents I can tell from the image at left that if it is "=1" it means "State of Alaska>Governor>News>News Archive as shown in the image at left under the large "Press Archive" heading highlighted in blue. Lest I say cornflower blue, even? Also note how the address bar (to the right of the little "house" home page icon -- it's Firefox with Ad Block Plus and No (java) Script enabled for you Firefox wonks out there...) indicates the same. How is this significant? It only shows that the results of following the link to SPECIFIC documents listed and shown in the last image resulted in SQUAT. NOTHING. Not because my search terminology was bunk and bullshit, but rather and perhaps more importantly because, in my opinion, they have flagged ALL documents that the former Palin administration deems as potentially damaging to them in a court of law by precisely that tag designation if the search criteria is also "Palin". Anything that meets that criteria of "type=1" brings up the empty page you see here. Don't believe me? Follow the links yourself and report back to me! I insist.

[added 09/28/09: Note also that I love to tweak URLs in the address bar by deleting part of it (for instance the "&ersand;type=1") and reloading the page. Normal HTML behavior would either do nothing, leaving the page as it is, or in most cases default back to an index. This did not happen in my search. They all basically redirected to the blank page shown in this post. People may argue that my search terms were flawed and I can counter by saying that these documents were available the day before, using the exact same search terms... thus another indicator that someone at the state website is burying them on purpose.]

Other documents that show Palin in a favorable light ARE NOT TAGGED in such a manner and display normally when clicking upon the listed green link. Those they wish to suppress and apparently hide from public view and public disclosure refuse to display. You get a variation of the same theme as shown in the image above. A mostly blank page of void and nothingness as presented by the Parnell administration. Way to go, Governor Empty Suit! Sad to see you have yet to "grow a pair" enough to truly distinguish yourself as being something other than Sarah Palin version 2.0 (aka S. P. v. 2.0)!

One commenter on this blog made a statement about Frank Murkowski and his documents being available on the press release archive page, as if to say that it's normal to get rid of the old governor's public documents and to answer that, I present the following captured image. Look closely in the cornflower blue "Press Releases" line... that's 452 hits for that search. Yes my search was more generic and yes it could be "a statistical anomaly", but I highly doubt it. It's not like Murkowski was more prolific at issuing press releases, nor was he, as a single term governor, in office much longer than Sarah Palin herself. Yet look at all those available documents! See many of them with the new tag "&ersand;type=1"? Nope. Were you to go to that search page, I can assure you that each and every damn document will display as is and NOT take you to a blank Governor Sean Parnell page as do the displays of Palin related press releases do. So who's zooming who here? Me or the state of Alaska? Demand further proof? Here's a screen capture of a "positive" Palin press release, one of only a limited few I was able to pull up in my browser.

At this point I am nothing less than spent. I literally pay $600 a year for my internet connection (because I like the high speed connection) and am NOT being paid by "partisan political operatives" as Sarah Palin herself continues to claim. She may be lying to Alaska and Alaskans even as she continues to attempt to suppress OUR FREEDOM OF SPEECH RIGHTS while she illegitimately and disgustingly wraps herself in the flag and the illusion of being a "patriot" and a rabid, fervent "supporter of our troops who have fought and died for rights". Unfortunately it appears that freedom of speech only applies to HER freedom of speech and not that of ALL Alaskans and ALL Americans. If anything she is the worst offender in this particular cultural battle -- one who continues to "make stuff up".

As far as I know NONE of my progressive Alaskan blogging peers are paid a dime and yet we continue to allow Palin and her small army of minions and operatives to frame the debate with outright LIES. Meanwhile, the main stream media, most especially outlets like the Anchorage Daily News, continue to fawn over her like she's a godess incarnate. I say that their medium and their way of exposing the truth about most things is purely "phoning it in" at this point, with no offense meant to Brendan or Sean whose day jobs depend upon them being "journalists", punching the clock for the "man". And in this case, the "man" is a corporation owned by out of state interests.

Main stream media is dead. Stick a fork in it and with this post I continue to present to you the brave new world that IS blogging and bloggers with all the ascendant abilities to use and utilize this new medium of the internet for the greater good of all Americans. I say, get used to it, people. As I'm sure many of you already are. We are underpaid (or as is my case, not paid at all) and overworked but we (and by we I mean, in this instance, Alaskan progressive bloggers) have a passion to dig up the truth and present it in a manner that is both meaningful and significant to all of us as citizens, using the tools of this new medium in ways that the mainstream media couldn't even imagine. It is my hope that all Alaskans and all Americans wake up to the new paradigm, the one where we all can report and participate in news events as they happen. Like the narrative presented above.

I encourage you to follow the bread crumbs, as it were, for yourself if you are so motivated. I almost insist that your participation is vital. That's how it is on the internet. It's your universe and my only purpose is to perhaps point you in the right direction and to expose things that make me and hopefully YOU righteously indignant about the way the world is presently run by corporate overlords. It is up to all of as as individuals to remain vigilant lest we be lulled into a hypnotic state by those who seek to control public opinion by manipulating the OLD paradigms of a stone cold dead fourth estate. Are you with me?

-Laz

20 comments:

  1. Albert Lewis7/28/2009 5:24 AM

    Excellent work. Are you going to set up an archive of the documents that you eventually find? (You *will eventually find them, of course.)

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  2. Being naturally curious I followed your link to SOA. I decided it would be kind to let the new gov aware of the empty links. But it would not accept my comment! Each time it erased my email address which is a required field. I tried removing the name Palin from my comments but it still didn't work. Is it because I'm not from AK? Weird.

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  3. Will have to pay many thousands of dollars to get redacted pages?

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  4. Laz - I sent this to Keith Oberman. I also suggest you put the word "updated" in your title - many of us link to your site via other AK blogs. I almost did not re-open your page today because I read it yesterday, not knowing you added so much more info.

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  5. SoCalWolfGal7/28/2009 11:04 AM

    Well, well, well. Queen Buttercup seems to get more and more like Tricky Dicky every day doesn't she? Can you say equivalent of giant shredder? God, this is unbelievable (well, not really). But at least as we all know, jut pressing the delete key doesn't necessarily mean it's gone for good.I sure hope AKM, Shannyn, Gryphen, and Celtic Diva can get KO and Rachel M on this. This actually makes me physically sick.

    Thanks Laz for posting this trail of deceit, because that is just what it is.

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  6. I'll bet someone has screen captures.

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  7. Thanks Ella, good idea. To all: I have sent the info to PA, Diva, Mudflats and Shannyn as well and will be working on MSM and government contacts after I get off work at 4pm. I'll update as I dig deeper. Thanks for all the feedback and support.

    -Laz

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  8. Oh, and I'm calling a lawyer...

    -Laz

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  9. This is interesting. I went to the page and it wants me to update my ie explorer. I am at work and only have ie6 here.
    Page grabs and freezes. Nothing else. Strange, no other website does that to me.

    10 cats

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  10. I agree these are required to be maintained. However, I do not think you should panic: dictum (a legal term of art having to do with portions of a legal opinion not directly relevant to the holding in a case) has nothing to do with it. A defendant can always make a hearsay objection, and I assume you are referring to the so-called "best evidence rule"; however, I cannot imagine that objection being successful if the "best evidence" was never in the custody or control of the plaintiff and exclusively was under the custody and control of a defendant (or third-party then answerable tot he defendant as chief executive) until its mysterious disappearance--a disappearance that itself could benefit a potential plaintiff by showing consciousness of wrongdoing. Moreover, in a libel or slander case it's the dissemination that counts: producing an "original" is not likely to be all of that significant.

    By all means, collect all the screen captures you can, but don't assume that cleansing a website will operate in any way to any potential defendant's benefit here.

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  11. The governor's page is the only one that wants to update me to ie 7 or above. Fine everywhere else.

    There's definitely something going on here.

    10cats

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  12. One important point I should have mentioned: although Alaska does follow the best evidence rule in its Rules of Evidence, be aware that the predicate for any and all valid hearsay objections is that out-of-court evidence is being offered for the proof of the matter asserted.

    When assertions are the basis of a libel/slander suit, by definition the plaintiff is alleging that the disseminated material was untrue. Therefore evidence of those statements is not being offered for its truth and therefore is not objectionable as hearsay.

    Again, I agree that these are all public records that must be maintained. I disagree that this making them disappear is going to disadvantage any potential defamation plaintiff, and I think it actually may work to their advantage as a reflection of awareness that those who made the public statements in question are aware that the material should not be disseminated any further.

    It interests me as a tactical question whether a competent lawyer at this point may have alerted someone that continuing to broadcast defamatory statements on a state website may comprise continuing defamation (possibly increasing potential damages for it), and that these records therefore may need to be maintained "off site," though still accessible upon a public records request?

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  13. the problem child7/28/2009 2:07 PM

    Tip: use real world google, not SOA's.

    search terms: "state of alaska" "press release" palin bloggers

    Click on "cached'.

    Here is the first link that comes up. http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:2iOyxdIrdFMJ:www.gov.state.ak.us/news.php%3Fid%3D1598+%22state+of+alaska%22+%22press+release%22+palin+bloggers&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ca&client=firefox-a

    The real world google is working fine.

    It is more work, of course, and doesn't really address the legal concerns, as you have to remember enough about what you are looking for to come up with decent search terms.

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  14. You can find the cached releases by typing in the release number in the search box ( say 09-95 for the April 22, 2009 release cited on Palingates) then view and print the cached version.

    How can we write a search to get say 09-01 thru 09-25? I would suggest we all "sign up" to find, save, and print a score or so of the releases. Also.

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  15. Great work, Laz. I'm kind of surprised, though, that you didn't automatically do screen captures of her pearls of wisdom, considering how open and transparent she is. I'm just sayin'....

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  16. Have you tried using the Wayback Machine at www.archive.org? You may be able to get the old Palin SOA webpages from there. It would be worth a try IMO. And here's hoping it works for you.

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  17. Has anyone checked archive.org records?

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  18. Don't forget that Murkowski did the same. He even re-organized URLs so nothing carefully crafted by Fran Ulmer to improve government transparency would work.

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  19. Wow! Thanks for all the tips and feedback... and yes I am spanking the "wayback machine" as we speak and will dig deeper into "the real Google Cache. I will say that I am less concerned with her twitter feed than I am access to the official SOA press releases that have gone missing, particularly the ones that targeted Linda and Shannyn. I'll update as I get more info.

    Thanks for the legal feedback too, AnonJD... I'm no lawyer, just a Litigation Support Tech so I appreciate you weighing in.

    Lastly, to 10cats -- I wouldn't use Explorer if you paid me $500 grand from an illegal trust fund! ;) Firefox, Chrome... all better and more secure alternatives.

    -Laz

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  20. (pardon the spelling errors above... you get the idea I think) ;)

    -Laz

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