Never mind the disastrous interview with Katie Couric or the blank stares in response to Charlie Gibson's question about the Bush Doctrine. Former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin calls the hacking of her Yahoo e-mail account "the most disruptive and discouraging" incident in last year's presidential campaign.

Writing in her new book, Going Rogue: An American Life, Palin says the intrusion into her personal e-mail account in September 2008 "created paralysis" in her administration, because it cut off easy communication with her "Alaska staff." Presumably, this refers to her staff in the governor's office, which would seem to be an acknowledgment that the personal account was used to conduct critical state work, as alleged in an activist's lawsuit last year.

Threat Level broke the story in September 2008 that someone using the name "Rubico" had obtained access to Palin's Yahoo e-mail account and posted photos – including two pictures of her children – and five screen shots of e-mail messages on the whistleblower site WikiLeaks. Bloggers traced "Rubico" to a 20-year-old Tennessee college student named David Kernell, whose father is a Democratic state legislator. Kernell is now free on bail awaiting trial for the hack, scheduled for next year.

Palin writes in her book that she was sitting in a Michigan hotel room with her husband Todd when she learned about the intrusion on TV. Just then Steve Schmidt, John McCain's campaign manager, walked in to confirm what she'd just seen on the news.

"It was another fine how-do-you-do: Hi, Governor, welcome to the blood sport known as presidential politics," Palin writes.

She describes seeing the contents of her private correspondence scrolling on the TV screen and recognizing the name of a friend who had sent her one of the e-mails.

"I was horrified to realize that millions of people could read my personal messages, including the thoughts of a friend who had written of her heartbreak over her pending divorce," she writes, adding "what kind of responsible press outfit would broadcast stolen private correspondence?"

A local activist sued last year to obtain e-mail from Palin's private accounts, alleging that Palin used the private accounts to conduct state business to get around state public records laws. The stolen data subsequently released to WikiLeaks indicated that Palin received numerous e-mails from her aides in the governor’s office, some of which appeared to be work-related.

A screen shot showing the index of Palin's inbox included a message from her press secretary, Meghan Stapleton, on the subject of a “Motor Fuel Tax Suspension.” The subject line of an e-mail from Randall Ruaro, her then-deputy chief of staff, read: “Draft letter to Governor Schwarzenegger.” The subject line of two other e-mails from Ruaro said, “Please approve” and “Court of Appeals Nominations.” Still more missives from Ruaro indicated they were about employee and budget issues for the DPS - Alaska's Department of Public Safety.

An Alaska judge ruled in August that Palin's use of personal e-mail accounts was not unlawful since the state's open records law didn't address the practice. But the controversy lives on as part of Kernell's defense: the accused hacker's lawyer has declared that the stolen e-mails were part of the public record, and that Palin had no expectation of privacy.

Palin writes that, upon learning of the breach last year, her mind immediately raced to personal messages that were stored in the e-mail account: exchanges with daughter Bristol over the pregnancy that Palin and the McCain campaign staff had announced just two weeks earlier; discussions with her husband over their newborn son's medical issues; farewell wishes to her eldest son, Track, before he deployed to military service.

Because the hack exposed the phone numbers and e-mail account addresses of her kids, they began receiving "vulgar e-mail threats and phone calls."

In Going Rogue, Palin writes that the McCain campaign confiscated her kids' phones, and she and her friends and family had to cancel personal and business accounts that had been exposed by the hack; as a result, she could no longer contact her kids.

"The incident put tremendous stress on the campaign," she writes. "Schmidt and others acted as though they believed scattered reports that my hacked e-mail contained incriminating messages that would 'destroy the McCain campaign.'"

She adds that "there were no messages, of course, but the episode ratcheted up paranoia and distrust inside the campaign."

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