Palin e-mail hacker a former KISD student Posted On: Friday, Oct. 3 2008 01:12 AM By Bill Begley
Killeen Daily Herald

When he heard the name connected to the story – the one about the college kid who allegedly "hacked" his way into a personal e-mail account for Republican vice presidential candidate Gov. Sarah Palin – Tracey McDaniels was not surprised.

There was, after all, a history there.

"He did the same kind of thing when he went to school here," said McDaniels, a history teacher at Eastern Hills Middle School. "He and another kid found a way to get onto the school's server – they just sat down and figured out the password."

A taste of things to come for David Kernell.

The 20-year-old son of a state representative in Tennessee, Kernell attended Killeen Independent School District schools from 1999 through 2001, and last month was the focus of an FBI investigation into the hacking of the Alaska governor's Yahoo e-mail account.

A federal grand jury in Chattanooga, Tenn., last week heard testimony about the case, but did not bring any charges in connection with the investigation.

The FBI's investigation uncovered an Internet address that traced back from Palin's e-mail account to Kernell's apartment complex in Knoxville, where he is a student at the University of Tennessee.

And McDaniels said all of it – the computers and politics – fits well with the seventh-grade student he remembers having in class at Eastern Hills.

"He was in TAG – the talented and gifted class – and he certainly lived up to it," McDaniels said. "He was one of the smartest kids I ever taught, especially when it came to the social sciences and politics."

Kernell is the son of Tennessee Rep. Mike Kernell, a Memphis Democrat. McDaniels remembered that the father was living in Memphis while the son was living in Killeen with his mother, Dr. Lillian Landrigan.

"I don't know why, but I do know that the family kept in contact with each other," McDaniels said. "I remember David going to Memphis to visit his father, and I remember that his mother was very involved with (David) and always at school functions."

McDaniels remembered the young Kernell as "standoffish" and "kind of a loner" who was into computers and computer games, and he was an outstanding chess player. According to chess.com, Kernell was a United States Chess Federation-rated player while still living in Killeen in 2001.

"I really don't think the other kids knew what to make of him," McDaniels said. "Politics was a big thing for him. He was really into it.

"He stood head and shoulders above everybody else in the political spectrum. I was a political science major in college, and he could hold a conversation with me – a coherent one."

McDaniels said when the stories began to surface about the hacking into Palin's e-mail and he "heard that the FBI was looking into the son of a Tennessee legislator," he put two-and-two together pretty quickly.

"I found his blog online, the one with the picture of him, and the blog about the e-mail and it sunk in," McDaniels said. "He was the kind of kid you could not forget."

Contact Bill Begley at bbegley@kdhnews.com or (254) 501-7541.