Palin e-mails revealed in former aide's upcoming memoir
A forthcoming memoir by an ex-aide to Sarah Palin includes a number of potentially damaging e-mails purported to have been sent by the former vice presidential candidate, according to Politico.
The manuscript, penned by former Palin aide Frank Bailey with the help of Jeanne Devon and Ken Morris (both Palin critics), was compiled based on a trove of more than more than 60,000 e-mails Bailey sent or received during his tenure working for Palin, reports the Anchorage Daily News.
According to the Daily News, the 456-page document, entitled "In Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin: A Memoir of our Tumultuous Years," is an unfinished draft with no set release date.
In some of the e-mails published in the manuscript - copies of which were obtained by Politico and the Anchorage Daily News - Palin allegedly expresses negativity about her duties as Alaska governor, and vows not to participate with any television networks other than Fox News.
"I hate this damn job," Bailey says Palin wrote in an e-mail on April 28, 2009, just months before she resigned her post as Alaska governor.
Palin is also portrayed as holding a grudge against CBS News' Katie Couric, who interviewed Palin during the 2008 presidential campaign - to what many viewed as devastating effect.
"She SUCKED in ratings before she stumbled upon her little gig mocking me," Palin wrote, according to Bailey. "She did almost lose her job before that VP interview..."
She also criticized NBC's Ann Curry for having conducted what she described as a "sickening, sickening" interview with Levi Johnston, the former fiance of Palin's oldest daughter, Bristol.
The book reports that Palin, as a result, vowed to limit her appearances to Fox News - and to steer clear of the "bad guys."
"Every time we participate with the bad guys we are telling viewers/readers: 'go watch them! Tune in to what they have to say to bash us today!' I can't do that anymore," Palin reportedly wrote. "I am through with the idiots who use and abuse us--we can NOT win them over, I hate giving them ratings boosts."
Bailey, a former Alaska Airlines manager who joined Palin's 2006 gubernatorial campaign, describes the former vice presidential candidate as someone who was obsessed with maintaining her public image closely - and who was determined to avenge bad publicity whenever possible.
"We set our sights and went after opponents in coordinated attacks, utilizing what we called 'Fox News surrogates,' friendly blogs, ghost-written op-eds, media opinion polls (that we often rigged), letters to editors, and carefully edited speeches," Bailey wrote, according to the Anchorage Daily News.
Bailey also wrote about Palin staffers' difficulty in pinning down her schedule.
"As mentioned in an earlier chapter, getting Sarah to meetings and events was like nailing Jell-O to a tree," Bailey wrote, as Politico reports. "On the campaign trail and as governor, Sarah went through at least ten schedulers, with few lasting more than months. Nobody wanted the job because Sarah might fail to honor, at the last minute, the smallest commitments, and making excuses for her became a painful burden. In at least one instance, a scheduler quit after breaking down in tears; another left after being accidentally copied on an email from Sarah trashing her."
And in one e-mail, from Jan. 2008, Palin allegedly expresses support for Republican Mike Huckabee in the 2008 presidential campaign - despite the fact that she ended up on the ticket with Arizona Republican John McCain.
"Huck's a good pick for me, just fyi," she wrote, according to Bailey.
