Beam me to Planet Gore !
I spent 4 hours last night reviewing the e-mails and found much of what is mentioned in this article.
The whole tone of e-mails dating back to 1996 is routinely defensive, strategic, accusatory and collusionous. These scientists get in endless feedback loops re-explaining several topics. The missing data associated with Mann's original studies of the 80’s is explained many different ways over the years until finally, it was suggested that the data was insignificant and couldn't be found because it was so old.
The the Brita study that tried to replicate what Mann did by some “updated” means exposed the same flaw and he got caught.
(As I understood it reading until I collapsed last night at 2:45 AM)