Emails Between Mark Sanford and His Mistress Were Turned Over to Newspaper Back in December

June 25th, 2009

UPDATE: The Mistress’ Other Boyfriend (Not Sanford, but Some Other Punter) Sent the Emails to The State

Ok, I guess we can put this one to bed. (Sorry, I could resist.)

Via: New York Times:

The mystery of who revealed Gov. Mark Sanford’s e-mail messages may finally be solved. A business associate of Mr. Sanford’s Argentine mistress said Friday that private messages between the two lovers had been sent anonymously to a South Carolina newspaper last December by an Argentine man the mistress had briefly dated.

The associate, who asked not to be identified, is a Buenos Aires television executive involved in hiring the woman, whom he identified as María Belén Chapur, a producer at the television network America from 2001 to 2002.

Last December, the executive said, Ms. Chapur was dating a young Argentine a few months after her affair with Mr. Sanford began. The man happened to see the e-mail messages being exchanged between the governor and Ms. Chapur, said the executive — who said he had direct knowledge of the situation — and hacked into her e-mail account to see the rest.

Infuriated, the man sent the messages to The State, the newspaper in South Carolina’s capital, Columbia.

When she found out, the executive said, Ms. Chapur immediately ended the relationship with the man, whose identity has not been disclosed.

In one of the published messages, dated July 9, 2008, Ms. Chapur wrote Mr. Sanford that she had seen another man.

“He is a very nice guy, great heart,” she wrote, “but unfortunately I am not in love with him. You are my love. Something hard to believe even for myself as it’s also a kind of impossible love, not only because of distance but situation.”

—End Update—

UPDATE: L.A. Times:

The emails, “Appeared to come from a personal e-mail account belonging to Sanford rather than a government-related account.”

—End Update—

What consenting adults do with their peepees is their business, but as this absurd spectacle unfolded yesterday, I didn’t see anyone asking: “How did a newspaper get these emails?”

There is no doubt that NSA would have intercepted these emails. First of all, they’re international communications. That’s just a no brainer. However, the fact that they involved a U.S. Governor and a foreign citizen probably means that the stuff was going into a database forever.

Looking at Maria Belen Shapur’s professional background (executive at a large agribusiness corporation, speaks several languages, including Chinese) it’s possible that she was a full time NSA target on her own. The U.S. routinely uses national intelligence means to benefit U.S. corporations operating abroad. With Governor Sanford on the scene, it’s easy to see how this link might have been a very worthwhile target.

Does this mean that the emails delivered to The State came from some sort of NSA leak? The potential is definitely there. To get at the likelihood of NSA involvement in this, we would have to know more about how Sanford sent the emails.

Did he use his official state government email account? Assuming he was that stupid, all of the messages would be available to some number of system administrators at the state. If he used something like Gmail, at work, while it’s still definitely possible that high level IT staff could have intercepted all of this information, it is somewhat less likely. The wholesale retention of a large organization’s network sessions is not trivial in terms of cost and infrastructure. Emails are routinely archived, network activity is routinely logged, but the actual contents of web sessions typically aren’t. For example, if someone went to gmail.com, most organizations would know that the employee went to gmail.com. Most organizations, however, wouldn’t routinely store what you read or wrote during the session. It depends. Obviously, if you’re working for some .mil or .gov outfit, I’d assume that your boss could sit your down and play back what did on the web like someone watching a movie on a DVD player.

But is South Carolina running a system like that? I doubt it, but maybe someone involved with the South Carolina State Government’s IT operations can tell us how much stuff is being pulled off the wire as part of standard operating procedure. Is the full session there? If so, sure, the emails could have come from work.

The big question is, did he use a non government email account on a non government Internet connection to carry out the conversations? If he did, it’s much more likely the work of NSA.

Via: The State:

E-mails, obtained by The State newspaper in December, between Gov. Mark Sanford and Maria, a woman in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

At the time, efforts to authenticate the e-mails were unsuccessful. However, Sanford’s office Wednesday did not dispute their authenticity.

The State has removed the woman’s full name and other personal details, including her street address, e-mail address and children’s names.

Research Credit: ottilie

2 Responses to “Emails Between Mark Sanford and His Mistress Were Turned Over to Newspaper Back in December”

  1. Seattle Shortbus says:

    I’m not sure there’s anything fishy going on here at all.

    According to another article in The State, they were sent from Sanford’s email account about the same time that his wife found out. The newspaper seems to indicate that she may have been the one to send them.

  2. Kevin says:

    So who leaked the emails?

    Seattle Shortbus sent me this link over email:

    http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090625/ap_on_re_us/us_sc_governor_e_mails_1

    The newspaper says it has had the messages since December, which would be about the time Sanford says his wife found out about the tryst. In a message to The Associated Press, managing editor Steve Brook declined to immediately elaborate on why it chose not to publish the e-mails earlier.

    In an interview on CNN’s “Larry King Live,” State reporter John O’Connor said the newspaper was sent the messages from the governor’s personal e-mail account by an anonymous person.

    What does “the governor’s personal e-mail account” mean? His personal account on which domain?

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