Hey guess who else shows up in this new batch of e-mails? Yours truly.

Now as many of you who have been around for awhile (Or who bothered to read the Important Immoral Minority posts on the right hand side of this blog) know I once did an impromptu interview with Sarah Palin back in January of 2009 with my friend Dennis Zaki. (You can read that a post about that experience here.)

This took place at the AT&T Sports Center in Wasilla, where Dennis and I had shown up on a whim as part of a series of interviews we were doing with people in Wasilla about Palin, and how they now viewed her since her return from the campaign trail.

As I write in my post, I had NO idea that we would run into the Governor.  But we did, and Dennis REALLY wanted to see if she would agree to a quick interview since she had avoided local press for several months by then.

After she agreed to the interview we could see that her thumbs were pounding away on her Blackberries and that she looked stressed, but we had no idea if it had anything to do with us, or if it was something else.

Well now we know.

What she was doing is revealed in a series of e-mails that can be found here.



From= Palin, Sarah (GOV sponsored) 
Sent= Sat 1/10/2009 1:21 PM 
To= Perry, Kristina Y (GOV); Nizich, Michael A (GOV) 
Cc= McAllister, William D (GOV); Bailey, Frank T (GOV); Leighow, Sharon W (GOV) 
Subject= Zaki 

Dennis Zaki is here at Willow’s basketball game - filming - now wants an interview on my comments re: media. (I think this is Dennis zaki anyway.) Before I confront him re: why he’s here (I put him offw intwerview request until after willow’s game ends) - does anyone know if he’s got kids who play middle school basketball? It will be sort of creepy if he somehow knew I’d be here for little girls basketball and followed me in to get an interview while I’m spending precious family time w my kids. 

(For the record we did NOT know of Willow's game. It was just serendipity that we showed up when we did.)

From: McAllister, William D (GOV) 
To: Palin, Sarah (GOV sponsored); Perry, Kristina Y (GOV); Nizich, Michael A (GOV) 
Cc: Bailey, Frank T (GOV); Leighow, Sharon W (GOV) 
Sent: Sat Jan 10 13:24:19 2009 Subject: 
RE: Zaki 

I seem to remember that he’s got a family, but I don’t know about kids’ ages. He was known last year to show up at events and videotape Don Young, for example. Then he posts it on his website. 

From: Palin, Sarah (GOV sponsored) 
To: McAllister, William D (GOV); Perry, Kristina Y (GOV); Nizich, Michael A (GOV) Cc: Bailey, Frank T (GOV); Leighow, Sharon W (GOV) 
Sent: Sat Jan 10 13:50:40 2009 Subject: 
Re: Zaki 

Very very creepy and suspicious. I gave him (and Zaki has people with him) a quick interview (his "reporter" sounded annoyed re: the comments I had made about annonymous bloggers), but they couldn’t answer my question w a straight face re how they happened to be here in Wasilla at a kids bball game at the same time I’m here. They haven’t filmed any other teams except Willows this entire time - and many other teams are playing right now in this tournament. So... Frank can look on YouTube soon to see what Zaki is up to with this video? 

(The "reporter" she is referring to is of course me as you can see above. I just talked to Dennis on the phone and he said that I could not have been nicer, so her comment that I "sounded annoyed" just sounds like paranoia to him. Remember SHE agreed to the interview based on her relationship with Dennis going back almost two years.)


From: Palin, Sarah (GOV sponsored) 
To: McAllister, William D (GOV); Perry, Kristina Y (GOV); Nizich, Michael A (GOV) Cc: Bailey, Frank T (GOV); Leighow, Sharon W (GOV) 
Sent: Sat Jan 10 14:11:28 2009 Subject: 
Re: Zaki 

Frank said he contracts w CNN and Muckraker. Zaki totally lied to me, I believe. He said he was there with others to film one of the guy’s kids - I followed them out after they filmed me, they had no kid w them. They’re up to something and accused me of giving People magazine more interviews than local - among other subtle accusations in their line of questioning. 

("Subtle accusations?" Paranoid much? I love this part because she admits that she followed us out of the building. What she does not admit however, is that she also wrote down my license plate number. Gee I wonder how I was outed later that year?)


From: Palin, Sarah (GOV sponsored) 
To: ’toad1982@gmail.com’ ; McAIlister, William D (GOV); Leighow, Sharon W (GOV); Perry, Kristina Y (GOV); Nizich, Michael A (GOV); Bailey, Frank T (GOV) 
Sent: Sat Jan 10 14:23:55 2009 
Subject: WHY Zaki 

I could not do a "no comment" in front of many parents watching my reaction.., trust me if I could have escaped I would have. The creepy thing is how they knew about willow’s games. 

(She could TOTALLY have said she was too busy to give this interview, or even said it was inappropriate to ask her at her daughter's basketball game. In fact that was what I EXPECTED to happen. Believe me, nobody was more surprised than I was to have her agree to that interview.)


From: Palin, Sarah (GOV sponsored) 
To: Cockrell, Robert A (GOV) 
Cc: Perry, Kristina Y (GOV); Nizich, Michael A (GOV) 
Sent: Sat Jan 10 14:27:50 2009 
Subject: Fw: WHY Zaki 

Head’s up that it’s a strange thing Dennis Zaki filmed two hours of Willow’s bball games. For whatever it’s worth - it gave me the creeps. 

(Yes well it gave me the creeps that she ran across a basketball game in progress, stormed out of the building, and then wrote down my license plate. So we're even.)

Palin even received an e-mail from Todd during all of this, warning her not to "do anything."  Whatever THAT means.

From: todd palin 
To: Palin, Sarah (GOV sponsored) 
Sent: Sat Jan 10 14:21:11 2009 
Subject: Re: Zaki 

He has a connection with C~, please don’t do anything. 

You just made someone else famous 

Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone powered by ACS!

Yes well the interview certainly did not make any of us famous.  But isn't it just like a Palin to believe that everything they touch turns to gold?

Now when you visit the link to my blog post about the interview you will probably notice that the YouTube video is no longer available. This is because Dennis has taken all of the Palin videos off of his account. (He said he is tired of looking at her face.)

I will host those videos on my account as soon as he brings them to me. However I am also sure that many of you have already seen it.

So there you have it, Palin's version of the first, and only time she and I came face to face.

My understanding is that ADN still has thousands of e-mails to put up (You can see what they have  so far here.), so there is a good chance that there may be several more that reference, or are all about, your Uncle Gryphen.

Unless of course those are redacted. Which most likely they are.