Update: Was Lieberman’s E-mail Really Down?

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Here’s something curious, first pointed out by the blog run by the campaign for Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Ned Lamont: Despite claims from Sen. Joe Lieberman’s (D-CT) re-election campaign that on Monday a hacker brought down their Web site and email service, they managed to send out on Tuesday morning a mass e-mail invitation for a Lieberman “victory” party later that day.

Until just recently, Lieberman’s Web site carried a statement posted Tuesday quoting since-fired campaign manager Sean Smith saying, “For the past 24 hours the Friends for Joe Lieberman’s website and e-mail has been totally disrupted and disabled [and] we believe that this is the result of a coordinated attack by our political opponents.” The downed e-mail was confirmed by the campaign’s internet consultant.

A sheepish note: we received a copy of the email Lamont’s blog cites, but didn’t bother to check it until we saw that post. But what do you know, plain as day — the email was sent from the “joe2006.com” domain, which was purportedly down; it’s dated Tuesday morning, when the service was supposedly unavailable; and it was sent by Sean “our e-mail is totally disrupted” Smith. Take a look:

You can see a PDF of the full email here.

And now that I go back and read it, a Tuesday story from CNN.com contains an odd note:

“This type of dirty politics has been a staple of the Lamont campaign from the beginning, from the nonstop personal attacks to the intimidation tactics and offensive displays to these coordinated efforts to disable our Web site,” said [campaign manager Sean] Smith in a statement e-mailed to reporters Monday evening.

A curious turn of events. Was the service not down, but merely sporadic? Was it up for several hours on Monday evening and Tuesday morning, but down before and after?

Unfortunately, as I noted below, neither the Lieberman campaign nor their technologists are returning my calls. As soon as I hear from someone, I’ll post their comments. It would be helpful to hear their side of this story.

Update: After receiving emails from several readers, we took a look at the detailed header information included in the email. It seems to show the email coming from “bluehornet.com,” a marketing email service. Perhaps the email was sent through them? Full header info after the jump.

X-Gmail-Received: af5c98d9b0d2e5f112efba98b20e7f86867c9367Delivered-To: xxxxxxxx Received: by 10.49.18.19
with SMTP id v19cs437786nfi; Tue, 8 Aug 2006 06:39:14 -0700 (PDT)Received: by 10.70.117.1 with SMTP id p1mr777604wxc; Tue, 08 Aug 2006 06:39:13 -0700 (PDT)
Return-Path: Received: from talkingpointsmemo.com (
talkingpointsmemo.com [69.20.5.88]) by mx.gmail.com with ESMTP id h20si5872123wxd.2006.08.08.06.39.13; Tue, 08 Aug 2006 06:39:13 -0700 (PDT)
Received-SPF: fail (xxxxxx.com: domain of bounce-use=M=542408388=echo4@returnpath.bluehornet.com does not designate
69.20.5.88 as permitted sender)Received: (qmail 15441 invoked by uid 110); 8 Aug 2006 13:39:13 -0000Delivered-To: 1-xxxxxx@talkingpointsmemo.comReceived: (qmail 15422 invoked by uid 110); 8 Aug 2006 13:39:13 -0000
Delivered-To: 1-xxxxxx@talkingpointsmemo.comReceived: (qmail 15414 invoked by uid 110); 8 Aug 2006 13:39:13 -0000Delivered-To:
1-xxxxxx@talkingpointsmemo.comReceived: (qmail 15411 invoked from network); 8 Aug 2006 13:39:13 -0000Received: from berlin.bluehornet.com (HELO
ipmx01-12.bluehornet.com) (216.54.194.12) by talkingpointsmemo.com with SMTP; 8 Aug 2006 13:39:13 -0000Received: from
returnpath.bluehornet.com (10.64.22.11) by ipmx01-12.bluehornet.com with ESMTP; 08 Aug 2006 08:38:43 -0500Message-Id: < 53lscb$mvhhn5@iport7.bluehornet.com>Return-Path: Date: Tue, 8 Aug 2006 06:36:49 -0700From: “Sean Smith” < info@joe2006.com>Reply-To: info@joe2006.comTo: “XXXXX XXXXXXX”

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