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Sarah Palin blamed by the US Secret Service over death threats against
Barack Obama

Sarah Palin's attacks on Barack Obama's patriotism provoked a spike in
death threats against the future president, Secret Service agents revealed
during the final weeks of the campaign.

By Tim Shipman in Washington
Last Updated: 4:04PM GMT 08 Nov 2008

Palin's tone may have unintentionally encouraged white supremacists

The Republican vice presidential candidate attracted criticism for
accusing Mr Obama of "palling around with terrorists", citing his
association with the sixties radical William Ayers.

The attacks provoked a near lynch mob atmosphere at her rallies, with
supporters yelling "terrorist" and "kill him" until the McCain campaign
ordered her to tone down the rhetoric.

But it has now emerged that her demagogic tone may have unintentionally
encouraged white supremacists to go even further.

The Secret Service warned the Obama family in mid October that they had
seen a dramatic increase in the number of threats against the Democratic
candidate, coinciding with Mrs Palin's attacks.

Michelle Obama, the future First Lady, was so upset that she turned to her
friend and campaign adviser Valerie Jarrett and said: "Why would they try
to make people hate us?"

The revelations, contained in a Newsweek history of the campaign, are
likely to further damage Mrs Palin's credentials as a future presidential
candidate. She is already a frontrunner, with Louisiana Governor Bobby
Jindal, to take on Mr Obama in four years time.

Details of the spike in threats to Mr Obama come as a report last week by
security and intelligence analysts Stratfor, warned that he is a high risk
target for racist gunmen. It concluded: "Two plots to assassinate Obama
were broken up during the campaign season, and several more remain under
investigation. We would expect federal authorities to uncover many more
plots to attack the president that have been hatched by white supremacist
ideologues."

Irate John McCain aides, who blame Mrs Palin for losing the election,
claim Mrs Palin took it upon herself to question Mr Obama's patriotism,
before the line of attack had been cleared by Mr McCain.

That claim is part of a campaign of targeted leaks designed to torpedo her
ambitions, with claims that she did not know that Africawas a continent
rather than a country.

The advisers have branded her a "diva" and a "whack job" and claimed that
she did not know which other countries are in the North American Free
Trade Area, (Canada and Mexico). They say she spent more than $150,000 on
designer clothes, including $40,000 on her husband Todd and that she
refused to prepare for the disastrous series of interviews with CBS's
Katie Couric.

In a bid to salvage her reputation Mrs Palin came out firing in an
interview with CNN, dismissing the anonymous leakers in unpresidential
language as "jerks" who had taken "questions or comments I made in debate
prep out of context."

She said: "I consider it cowardly. It's not true. That's cruel, it's
mean-spirited, it's immature, it's unprofessional and those guys are jerks
if they came away taking things out of context and then tried to spread
something on national news that's not fair and not right."

She was not asked about her incendiary rhetoric against Mr Obama. But she
did deny the spending spree claims, saying the clothes in question had
been returned to the Republican National Committee. "Those are the RNC's
clothes, they're not my clothes. I asked for anything more than maybe a
diet Dr Pepper once in a while. These are false allegations."

Speaking as she returned to her native Alaska, Mrs Palin claimed to be
baffled by what she claims was sexism on the national stage. "Here in
Alaska that double standard isn't applied because these guys know that
Alaskan women are pretty tough, on a par with the men in terms of being
outdoors, working hard," she said.

"They're commercial fishermen, they're pilots, they're working up on the
North slopein the oil fields. You see equality in Alaska. I think that was
a bit of as surprise on the national level."

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