'Q: Is President Obama giving away several Alaskan islands to Russia?' (No.)

http://factcheck.org/2012/03/alaskan-island-giveaway/

A: No. The U.S. has never claimed ownership of the islands identified in viral emails and websites. They lie far closer to the coast of Siberia than to Alaska.

... According to a 1990 story by the Associated Press, Wrangel and four other uninhabited islands were surveyed in 1881 by a U.S. Navy commander, and for a time were listed in the “District of Alaska” by the U.S. Geological Survey. That’s about the extent of justification for calling them “Alaskan.” Neither the U.S., Britain nor Canada has disputed the Soviet (and now Russian) claim to Wrangel. The U.S. State Department says Wrangel and the others weren’t included in the U.S. purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867, and “they have never been claimed by the United States.”

Nevertheless, a crusading California activist named Carl Olson, of Woodland Hills, Calif., made it his business to claim that the islands are “100 percent American,” as the AP said in 1990. The organization Olson founded, “State Department Watch, Ltd,” is still pressing that argument today. (The group is a nonprofit advocacy organization that reported taking in $2.4 million in 2010 but spent most of it on fundraising, according to its most recent IRS Form 990. It paid Olson an $80,000 salary, made grants of $51,000 to the “1776 Tea Party” of Laguna Woods, Calif., and $9,500 to the “Minuteman Project, Inc.” of Aliso Viejo, Calif. But nearly $2 million was reported going for postage and printing. The group reports that it hired Virginia-based WJM Associates, a fundraising and marketing firm that lists several Republican and conservative groups as clients.)

... The whole business was raised anew in an opinion piece published Feb. 16 on the conservative site World Net Daily (notable for promoting dubious claims about the president’s birthplace). It was written by Joe Miller, the Tea Party favorite who defeated Sen. Lisa Murkowski (daughter of former Sen. Frank Murkowski) in the 2010 Republican Senate primary, only to see Lisa Murkowski go on to win the general election handily as a write-in candidate.