FBI: Lickerman Campaign Responsible for Website Crash

Gotcha, Joe! Remember this? Lamont should certainly sue Zellliberman. Hat tip to Jeralyn at Talkleft for the article.

If you missed the story back in 2006 about Joe Lieberman campaign's allegation that the Ned Lamont campaign hacked his website the day before the CT primary, Crooks and Liars has a good rundown from the day the Lamont Campaign was cleared following an investigation by the state attorney general's office and the U.S. Attorney's office.

Today the Stamford Advocate releases an e-mail it obtained via a FOIA request showing the FBI's conclusion that Lieberman's campaign was responsible for the crash.

The FBI office in New Haven found no evidence supporting the Lieberman campaign's allegations that supporters of primary challenger Ned Lamont of Greenwich were to blame for the Web site crash.

Lieberman, who was fighting for his political life against the anti-Iraq war candidate Lamont, implied that joe2006.com was hacked by Lamont supporters.
[More...]

"The server that hosted the joe2006.com Web site failed because it was overutilized and misconfigured. There was no evidence of (an) attack," according to the e-mail. A program that could have detected a legitimate attack was improperly configured, the e-mail states. "New Haven will be administratively closing this investigation," it concluded.

Lieberman quickly blamed Lamont for the attack:

Visitors who tried to access Lieberman's site at the time received a message calling on Lamont to "make an unqualified statement denouncing this kind of dirty campaign trick and to demand whoever is responsible to cease and desist immediately."

"Our Web site consultant assured us in the strongest terms possible that we had been attacked," former Lieberman campaign spokesman Dan Gerstein said in December 2006.
In the end,

According to the FBI memo, the site crashed because Lieberman officials continually exceeded a configured limit of 100 e-mails per hour the night before the primary.