Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin (32 page)

It is interesting to note that Todd seemed to know which three offenses against Wooten had been sustained as well as terms of the trooper's original ten-day suspension. No matter the source of his information, to have Sarah and Todd swear in 2008 that they knew
nothing
of this matter is one of those situations where I find myself saying, “I wish I'd known then what I know now.”

Over those many months, and while ignorant of this aspect of the Wooten case, I continued to do Todd's bidding. Not content to have Brad Thompson in risk management concern himself with workmen's comp claims only, Todd had me forward additional unflattering information to Brad, just in case he wasn't fully aware of the magnitude of the beast.

Is any of this information true? I don't know. Where did Todd get all his information? No clue. Did I send this to Brad? Yes, because at the time, I believed every word.

On August 17, 2007, Todd emailed me a standard complaint:
“It's very frustrating to hear wooten is still a trooper.”
He then spoke of Trooper Wooten's attorney, Chancy Croft. Todd suggested that
“croft
has no idea about the ticking time bomb he's representing. If he new that thiis animal thretened to kill sarahs dad and threatened to bring donw sarah, would he continue to represent him, he needs to know.”

In his normal but quixotic way, Todd was encouraging me to pass along information to Chancy Croft about his client in the hopes that the veteran workmen's compensation lawyer would terminate his representation. If I'd asked Todd about the advisability of including the letter he had me send Brad Thompson, I believe he'd have said “absolutely” and then reiterated, “But don't truncate any of it.” On that same day and likely motivated by our conversation, Todd let Kris Perry know,
“It's beyond Sarah and I that wooten is still a trooper . . . what is walt thinking.”

There are a couple of significant things about these summer 2007 emails. Wooten was like a cold sore, liable to pop up at any time. Additionally, Todd acknowledged that it was equally perplexing to Sarah that Wooten was still a trooper. Todd was beginning to question Commissioner Walt Monegan when he asked,
“what is walt thinking,”
which also marked a change in focus. From that moment, Todd believed that Monegan was committed to a law-enforcement blue line that protected rogue cops like Wooten.

In October Todd phoned with yet another joyous revelation. With Wooten still on light duty, he was bragging about drawing a moose tag in the state run lottery, permitting him to hunt in a prescribed wilderness area. “Frank, are you sitting down? Word is that supposedly handicapped Wooten's got a moose hunt planned. What? He thinks he'll have this miraculous recovery by then? My ass he is.”

My reaction was to say, “No kidding, Todd?”

“If this isn't clear enough fraud for Monegan and his leg humpin' blue line, I dunno what is.”

“We can find out about his getting the tag,” I said, immediately willing to renew the fight. “This is blatant fraud if it can be proven.”

With Todd's endorsement, I phoned the Department of Public Safety and talked to a DPS spokesperson. In this instance, I made it clear that I spoke only for myself and did not mention Todd or Sarah by name. In that conversation, I supplied the details as given to me by Todd. A bit later, Colonel Audie Holloway, Grimes's recent successor
as director of the Alaska State Troopers, phoned back. I immediately put my foot squarely in my mouth when I recited many of the Wooten abuses as I knew them and said, “If this guy's truly done all the things I've heard of and he's still a trooper, than someone in DPS doesn't know how to do an employee investigation.” My speech surely sounded like fighting words from an uninformed blowhard. Despite that, Holloway asked when the hunt was to occur. The man, showing great restraint, was respectful and suggested that if I uncovered any additional information, I should feel free to call back.

When I contacted Todd and gave him the blow-by-blow account of this conversation, he appreciated my aggressiveness. Just before he left to collect additional details for me to turn over to DPS, he said, “They're a brotherhood, Frank. They protect their own at DPS, every damn one of 'em. Let me tell you, if you aren't one of 'em, you don't cross that blue line.” His accumulated frustration now went well beyond Wooten. The Alaska State Troopers brotherhood—and anyone who defended it—all deserved a gubernatorial spanking.

On September 24, 2007, Todd entered my office, shut the door, and plopped down on the sofa. From under his jacket, he produced a video. “Check this out, man.”

On the tape, we watched an overweight man whom Todd claimed to be Wooten being filmed from behind at a high school basketball game. He held popcorn and a drink while wildly cheering and jumping up and down. “Does he look disabled to you?” Todd asked. Since we never saw the guy's face, I am not even sure it was Wooten.

The next day, Todd emailed me a series of new talking points to deliver to Brad Thompson if and when Wooten was finally deposed:

Todd concluded by offering an effective summation of his feelings:
“My blood is boiling just thinking about what this dirt bag is doing and the thought of him getting a hudge settlement.”

Sarah and I had no direct communication on these matters, but she was still a player. Spokesperson Meg Stapleton, who eventually became the governor's superconfidante, had her own introduction directly from Sarah on May 6, 2007. Sarah, as she did in nearly every instance when discussing other trooper scandals, felt compelled to include a Wooten tirade. After remarking on a sentence handed down to an officer who assaulted a fifteen-year-old in Fairbanks, she let Stapleton know,
“also confidentially—between this trooper's horrible actions and the message my sister received from her ex (an active state trooper) again this week that he'll continue to ‘mess with the governor's sister' and our family by alleging falsehoods (he's done this before)—well some of the state's ‘finest' in uniform continue to disappoint.”
Sexual misconduct merited fewer than ten words; a man who remained a constant thorn in the Palins' side, five times that much ink.

A bit later, on September 27, 2007, Sarah wrote Walt Monegan an email in which she again mentioned Wooten in a discussion of a Trooper Spitzer, who
“had a bad reputation along with his fellow trooper whom we've talked about before.”
For Sarah, while perhaps an accidental admission, she verified prior discussions with Monegan regarding Wooten, something that she would later downplay throughout the eventual dismissal of the controversy in 2008.

Yet Sarah, in the second half of 2008, testified ignorance of
any
action by subordinates regarding Wooten and denied putting pressure on Monegan to fire the man. Making a mockery of these assertions under oath were additional emails released by Walt Monegan to counter Sarah's representations. The first of these was sent by Sarah to Monegan only five weeks into her administration, on February 7, 2007. With the exception of a single sentence concerning a bill designed to handle police officers found guilty of murder, this lengthy email detailed multiple grievances she had with her ex-brother-in-law. The list was bitterly exhaustive, and Sarah suggested that the investigation by Colonel Julia Grimes was “a joke.” She maintained to Monegan.
“This trooper is still out on the street, in fact he's been promoted.”

While technically correct that she never said “fire Wooten,” Sarah's complaint that he was still a trooper would lead most people to speculate that she did not approve of his employment status. For Sarah, another example of parsing words (eventually under oath).

Not yet finished, on May 7, 2008, Sarah wrote Monegan again:
“I received the other night where an Ak State Trooper recently told a friend of family that he could further ‘mess with the governor's sister' by claiming falsehoods about us—well—none of our ‘finest' in uniform continue to disappoint.”
Not only did this linguistically challenged message point to Sarah's distrust of Wooten, but it highlighted personal animosity toward troopers in general. As Sarah's complaints indicated, she was no less passionate than Todd about Wooten, and the longer the trooper's employment continued, the larger the conspiracy grew and the more the couple blamed the troopers organization.

For someone who swore under oath that she never pressured Commissioner Monegan to fire Wooten, Todd's email unequivocally suggested that her influence had not been powerful enough to have Wooten dismissed. Even if Sarah's assertion that Todd never discussed Wooten with her was true, Sarah's own emails provided clear examples of pressure. And since Alaska's first couple had no off-button to their shared inner rage, they likely shared a lot more than they claimed.

As I believed Walt Monegan to be far from stupid, he undoubtedly read the dump-Wooten messages loud and clear. What none of us understood—with our limited information—was why the commissioner didn't just fire the rogue trooper. I came to share Todd's belief that Monegan was guilty of sacrificing justice for trooper brotherhood. In Sarah's you're-with-me-or-agin-me world, Monegan had, by the end of 2007, chosen
agin
. Going into 2008, our noncompliant commissioner found himself squarely in the Palin crosshairs.

It was, barring a Monegan come-to-Jesus moment, merely a matter of time and a final straw before he felt Sarah's wrath.

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Accusation Spaghetti