White House Identified as Source of Massive Issue Spam

Washington, D.C., September 22, 2006 -- Investigators with the FCC announced today they have conclusively determined the White House to be the source of the chatty pro-Bush and pro-Republican "issue emails" that clogged an estimated 164 million American email inboxes last week.

While the rules regarding unsolicited political email are even fuzzier than those detailed in the CAN-SPAM Act regulating commercial email, a spokesman for the FCC did not rule out the possibility that criminal charges would be pursued.

As virtually anyone equipped with an email address is already aware, the incident in question concerns a bulk unsolicited "issue email" that was apparently emailed via the White House's own SMTP servers to millions of unsuspecting email users last week. An estimated 522,000,000 copies of the email were sent and received over a seven-hour period, primarily by US residents but also overseas, overloading thousands of email servers worldwide and leading Microsoft to inadvertently deregister the hotmail.com domain name for a three-day period.

For those who did not receive a copy of the email, the text, which was disguised as a personal note from an anonymous neighbor, reads as follows:

Hi neighbor!

You don't know me personally, but I live right around the corner and I've seen you walking around and just generally being a fellow concerned American living in my neighborhood, and I'm sure you've seen me too, so I thought I'd drop you a note to tell you a little about how I'm feeling about our Country right now and see if you feel the same way. Because you look to me like a real honest person who Truly loves our country just as much as I do.

Isn't our President George W. Bush doing such a great job as leader of the Free World? I sure am happy he's the President, and I know you probably are too. I don't know about you, but I don't believe those poll numbers that say nobody likes him anymore. I think those are fakes, don't you? I think the same people who make those polls are the same people who think it's all right for homosexuals to live together and, God forbid, ruin Marriage, the most important stable Bedrock of our society's foundation. Doesn't that just make you sick? My former spouse sometimes agreed with those kinds of people, and that made me sick, too.

Thank God the economy's going so well. I feel more prosperous everyday, don't you?

Remember when George W. Bush killed that evil terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi back in June? I don't know what you think, but what I think is President Bush probably flew in there all by himself in his Fighter Jet and dropped the bomb that killed Zarqawi, because he's that brave and resourceful, just like all the God fearing Republicans in Congress, don't you think? They're brave and resourceful too, and they have that real Can-Do attitude and they're working real hard to protect the American way of Life from evil doers and activist judges, and everyday I thank God for that, don't you?

I sure am happy we're making Iraq free and winning the War on Terror.

Anyway, I just wanted to let you know what I was thinking and if you want to get a cup of coffee sometime and talk about it or anything, I'm right around the corner. And don't forget the election this November. I'm sure you haven't forgot, but that's only a few weeks away, and it's real important. Can you imagine if they let people get into Congress who think it's OK to burn our country's flag, the most treasured National Symbol we have!

I know you'll get out there and do the Right Thing, and that's what I'm going to do, too. I'll see you at the voting booth, neighbor! Maybe I can give you a ride in my Hummer. It makes me feel so safe, just like George W. Bush and all the congressional Republicans.

Sincerely,

Your friendly neighbor in Patriotic Love for America

FCC investigators, using techniques that included examining the electronic email "headers" and the "reply-to" addresses, have determined that the issue emails almost certainly originated from within the White House's own email system.

"We found no trace of spoofing or other manipulations of the kind generally used by commercial spammers," Sheldon Rooter, a FCC special electronic communications analyst, said. "This was apparently sent directly from a White House computer straight out to a very large list of email addresses, seemingly harvested from the NSA mainframes. Not, in other words, the brightest spammer we've ever encountered. Also, the computer seems to have been located very close to the Oval Office."

A separate panel of linguistic analysts have reached the surprising conclusion that the note, in all likelihood, was most likely written by President George W. Bush himself.

"We can't be one hundred percent sure," Milo Ribbleblotter, a linguistic and handwriting expert with the Chicago Attorney General's office, said, "but a close look at the phrasing, limited vocabulary, and haphazard punctuation and capitalization of the note definitely indicate a close convergence with the President's style. That, and the fact that the reply-to address was 'potus@whitehouse.gov'."

By Ion Zwitter, Avant News Editor