Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin (29 page)

“DPS has done nothing. He's a loose cannon and a ticking time bomb. He told Molly that he'd ‘take your sister'—me—‘down.' Then they put Mike in Wasilla, let him be a trooper in our own city. Gary, what are you people thinking? He's in a patrol car, with a gun, saying he'll take me down, and you put him in my backyard.” Todd's mouth turned down while he pressed his hands together hard enough to make gravel from stone. The only thing that likely kept him from exploding was Sarah's thorough job of disemboweling Wooten. “I'm afraid,” Sarah continued, “and I mean it. I'm sure he'd do it; he'll pull over my son Track one day and plant a bag of drugs under a seat during a search and bust him just to embarrass the family.”

The meeting left me shaken, and the ugly possible outcomes of a rogue trooper swam furiously in my mind.

So real was the threat Sarah described that I asked myself: If this lunatic came at her with a gun, would I throw myself in harm's way to save her? With hands trembling too hard to continue note taking, I told myself I would. Same way I'd sacrifice myself for my wife and children, I'd give my life for hers. Later, when I spoke to Kris Perry about all I'd heard from Sarah, I said, “This guy Wooten is nuts. I could see him going postal and could walk in one day and blow Sarah or Todd away.” In short, I believed Sarah's every word.

While I never forgot the drama of that meeting, the name Wooten faded as Sarah ascended from governor-elect to governor. As I was shuffled off to the Department of Administration for the next few months, a world apart from the mainstream I'd been accustomed to, I heard nothing more until, out of the blue, Todd contacted me for the first time in months. Sometime around April 1, 2007, he said, Trooper Wooten, the guy whom I'd learned months ago was a threat
to the Palin family, was riding on a snowmobile (Alaskans call them “snow machines” or “sleds”) while supposedly collecting workmen's compensation insurance. Todd had a photograph, a sure indictment, he claimed, of fraud. He convinced me that Wooten was gaming the system and his outrage became my outrage. As a lifelong conservative, I believe that government welfare is a policy reserved for extreme hardship and the abuse of that benefit is unforgivable.

“Frank, this dirtbag is supposed to be flat on his friggin' back. Claims he hurt his back pulling some dead guy out of a ditch. Riding that huge sled, does he look too hurt to work?” Todd pointed to the photo of a giant, muscle-bound man atop a machine that weighed the better part of a half ton. “Dirtbag's collecting a big chunk of his pay snow-machining in the back country. Look at him. The guy takes steroids and is as big as a tree. Hurt? That's bullshit, Frank. He threatens my family, and DPS does nothin'. You know people that deal with comp, right? Is there a fraud unit? He needs to go.”

In my days as a lower-level airline industry manager, I handled over a hundred employee relations cases and had some familiarity with the administration of workmen's comp. For the first time in many months, I felt needed. My enthusiasm for Todd's mission acted like fast-drying glue to a sudden friendship.

“I'll pass a copy of this along to Brad Thompson,” I promised. As state director of risk management, Brad had responsibility for investigating incidents that might result in an asset loss to the state, and I told Todd, “If he's not the guy to do something, he'll know where to go with this stuff.” Though Sarah and Todd had spun the truth repeatedly over the past year, I did not doubt anything Todd said; I was bordering on that class of person you can fool all of the time. As I'd done for Sarah a hundred times, I was prepared to fight for her family.

From that first moment Todd reached out to me and feigned outrage, I became an active participant in the dump-Wooten game. I was a fully committed believer that Trooper Mike Wooten was all of the adjectives Todd had hurled at him: “cheat,” “fraud,” “loose cannon,” “ticking time bomb,” “scumbag,” “sleazeball,” and (ironically, because
Sarah used the term as a positive in her own book,
Going Rogue
), a “
rogue
cop.” Once again, how getting Trooper Wooten fired would make the family safer never did enter my mind.

Later that day, via email, Todd sent me a packet of information on Wooten. At the time, I scrolled the first couple of screens on my BlackBerry of what were a dozen or more letters and emails and forwarded the information to Thompson, my intention being to give him enough ammunition to get Trooper Wooten fired, which was, unequivocally, what Todd wanted to see happen. Because I was preoccupied and felt that I already had all the important details, I did not then plow through Todd's Wooten file—which included copies of multiple verbal and written attacks on the trooper by the Palin family. As a result, I had no inkling of the three-year family vendetta. Nor did I realize that the judge presiding over the Molly McCann–Mike Wooten divorce, Judge John Suddock, had issued multiple warnings against the constant belittling of the trooper. Suddock said, “Disparaging will not be tolerated—it is a form of child abuse.” Later he threatened to curtail Molly's custody rights if she and her extended family did not back off. He concluded by suggesting that if the relentless attack continued, the court “will not hesitate to order custody to the father.”

Likely because there hadn't been a public record of any Palin-Heath letters of complaint, after she removed Walt Monegan from his commissionership at DPS, Sarah started perpetuating the sound bite to anyone who would listen—inside the office and out—that “neither the Palin nor the Heath family had ever filed a single complaint against Wooten.” To this day, I wonder how her conscience allowed her to say something that was so blatantly false. Unfortunately, supporting documentation regarding her lie had to be removed from this book at the insistence of the Alaska attorney general's office.

All of the damning information I had on Wooten and Monegan was filtered and editorialized by the Palins. Therefore, what I did not know was that while Sarah was claiming that neither she nor her family ever filed a single complaint against Trooper Wooten, an email that she'd written to Colonel Julia Grimes on August 10, 2005, was already being circulated. (Like many of the emails cited, it was a part
of the packet Todd sent me that I passed along to Brad Thompson.) At the time, Colonel Grimes was director of the Alaska State Troopers and Mike Wooten's supervisor.

In a four-page email, Sarah wrote,

She then, in similarly rambling fashion, detailed a series of allegations collected with the assistance of a private investigator, Leonard Hackett, hired by Sarah and Todd to interview witnesses to Trooper Wooten's troubling behavior. In that incriminating laundry list were allegations of off-duty drinking that included intimidation of another bar patron; being pulled over right after that incident for suspected drunk driving; avoiding a second DUI while driving with his new, married girlfriend by intimidating the officer who'd pulled him over; driving home drunk after a Super Bowl party with his stepson in the car; drinking three beers while driving his family home from a snow-machine trip; being abusive to his former wives (three of them); harboring a disrespect and dislike for Alaska Natives; illegal hunting acts (specifically, killing a cow moose in 2003 while illegally using Molly's hunting permit when she refused to fire at the animal); employing illegal wolf-hunting techniques; tasering his eleven-year-old stepson; physical abuse of Sarah's sister Molly; threatening Sarah's father, Chuck Heath, after he said he'd hire an attorney for his daughter's divorce action against Wooten; refusing to pay a $5 fine at the Mat-Su Borough Landfill; threatening to “bring down” anyone whom he dislikes; claiming that he bugged Molly's phone; not showing up for work to avoid being served with a domestic-violence restraining order; and generally not telling the truth.

Sarah added a PS to the email, explaining that she had
“objectively
separated the divorce and Wooten's threats against me and my family with the fact that the Troopers have a loose cannon on their hands.”

Not only did Sarah file that complaint, but her father penned a follow-up letter on October 9, 2005, also to Colonel Grimes. In this message was a fresh allegation. Heath claimed that on September 30, 2005, Wooten “confronted 14-yr-old Bristol Palin, my granddaughter, at a Wasilla High football game. In the presence of others he called her a ‘f-----asshole.' This was while he was a member of the Wasilla High coaching staff.”

Because they were interviewed as part of the process, Sarah, Todd, and Chuck Heath were all aware that Colonel Grimes was already researching the allegations against Wooten. Grimes had appointed Sergeant Ron Wahl to conduct a thorough investigation. In referencing that, Heath then wrote, “My family and friends who gave statements to Sgt. Ron Wahl are, understandably, uneasy about the fact that Wooten is still a trooper.” Heath then repeated many of the complaints outlined in Sarah's August email.

Sarah, upon reviewing her father's letter prior to having it mailed, wrote to Todd:

While Chuck Heath's phrase “uneasy about the fact Wooten is still a trooper” and Sarah's throwing in
“but Mike is still a law enforcement official”
do not specifically call for Wooten to be fired, these and several other future comments more than suggested that this was their intended goal, despite the dozens of eventual denials.

Not done yet with their pressure on Colonel Julia Grimes, Todd, again with Sarah's assistance and approval, sent a third message to her
on December 2, 2005, weeks after Sarah had filed to run for governor. Todd began his letter by saying, “It has come to my attention that Trooper Michael Wooten will not be charged in his illegal shooting of a cow moose, due to ‘lack of evidence.' ” Todd attached a picture of the dead moose with the caption “illigal moose.” Todd went on to say that he could “only conclude that, this Trooper is above the law,” and that because of this, “some Alaskans' outlook towards DPS is evolving into one of distrust and disappointment.” It couldn't be lost on Grimes that Todd was including himself and the potential next governor of Alaska in that “disappointed” group. The next paragraphs repeated Sarah's original complaints and added a few others, including Wooten's intimidation of a Wasilla High School cross-country coach. Why, Todd wanted to know, was this “ticking timebomb” allowed to wear the uniform and carry a gun?

A packet of information containing some of the same material that Todd had emailed to me was forwarded by Sarah and Todd to various members of the media as part of a multipronged attack to have Wooten dismissed. In September Todd sent a letter to both Lisa Demer at the
Anchorage Daily News
and Meghan Baldino at KTUU television, suggesting that they investigate Trooper Wooten. When they appeared interested, they were sent specifics, including Sarah's letter. Months later, the Palins continued to follow up and pass along additional information. That same month, another copy of her letter was sent to Curtis Smith, who at the time was part owner of a PR firm. (This was before he became Sarah's spokesperson.) Smith passed along the information to his former employer KTUU News Director John Tracy, with expectations that Tracy
“would light a fire under someone,”
maybe even reporter Meghan Baldino. In December Sarah typed another letter intended for Mark Kelsey, managing editor of the
Mat-Su Frontiersman
newspaper. She began by writing, “Yes, the trooper issue. It's confidential, but: Todd and I will have to sit down with you and let you know what's going on with one of our illustrious law enforcement agents.” She explained about having hired a private investigator “to get the facts and only the facts. Then we presented our findings to some top brass.” She concluded by suggesting, “An employee with obvious problems may not be most qualified to carry a badge or a gun.”

As she did with Randy Ruedrich during the 2006 campaign by suggesting that he was behind a series of plots to bring her down, Sarah seemed to believe, with little evidence, that Wooten was responsible for disseminating a host of embarrassing facts and rumors. When poor grades forced one of her kids from participating in sports and when a false story circulated that her son Track was involved in vandalizing school property, she similarly seemed to believe that Wooten was the likely source. In the case of this December 2005 vandalism incident, Sarah also emailed a long list of contacts in radio, television, and print media to discredit the story. She alerted them that
“if false accusations of this sort are coming from a State Trooper who has vowed to destroy our family, then the AST
[
Alaska State Troopers
]
organization has a bigger problem on its hands than it did before. (I'm speaking of an estranged brother-in-law who has been under investigation by AST for illegal activity and threats against a family member.)”
Lost on Sarah was the irony of debunking one potentially false accusation (that son, Track, destroyed school property) with another (that Wooten sourced the rumor). Two weeks later, when another story about Track surfaced, Sarah again pointed the finger by alerting her list of media contacts and staff:
“it could be Wooten planting seeds.”