For the past several years,
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republican vice
presidential
candidate, has been embroiled in a bitter family feud that
has
drawn in the state police, the attorney general, the governor's
office
and the state Legislature.
A bipartisan state
legislative panel has appointed a special prosecutor
to
investigate whether Palin improperly brought the family fight
into the
governor's office. The investigation is focusing on
whether she and her
aides pressured and ultimately fired the
public safety commissioner,
Walter Monegan, for not removing
Palin's ex-brother-in-law from the state
police force.
Palin has said she did not pressure Monegan or fire him for not
taking
action against her former brother-in-law. A spokesman for
Sen. John
McCain's campaign, who asked not to be identified
because the matter is
under investigation, said Palin's actions
were merely intended to alert
Monegan about potential threats to
her family from her sister's
ex-husband, Mike Wooten.
Interviews with principals involved in the dispute and a review of
court
documents and police internal affairs reports reveal that
Palin has been
deeply involved in alerting state officials to her
family's personal
turmoil. Overheard threats
The
trouble between Wooten and the governor's sister broke into the
open
in January 2005. That month, Wooten attended a
trooper-sponsored event in
Idaho with a married woman, according
to an e-mail Sarah Palin later wrote
to the chief of the state
police.
A month later, when Palin's sister, who uses her
previous married name of
Molly McCann, confronted Wooten, he
threatened to kill her father, Sarah
Palin alleged in the e-mail,
saying she overhead the threat on a
speakerphone.
"Wooten's words were, 'I will kill him. He'll eat a (expletive)
lead
bullet, I'll shoot him,' if our father got the attorney to
help Molly,"
Palin said. "I heard this death threat, my
16-year-old son heard it (Track
Palin), Molly heard it, as did
their small children. Wooten spoke with his
trooper gun on his
hip in an extremely intimidating fashion, leaving no
doubt he is
serious about taking someone's life who disagrees with
him."
There is no record of police charging Wooten for the
alleged threat.
Through his attorney, Wooten declined to comment
for this article.
On the day that the governor's younger
sister filed for divorce - April
11, 2005 - Palin's father, Chuck
Heath, called state police to file a
complaint about Wooten. He
handed the phone to his daughter Molly, who
told state police
that her husband had threatened her father's life, shot
a "cow
moose" without a license, Tasered his 10-year-old stepson and
drank
beer while driving his police vehicle home. An angry
e-mail
A month later, Palin, then chairing the state oil
and gas commission, was
interviewed by a state police
investigator. She told him about the
speakerphone incident.
Fearful for the lives of her sister and her father,
Palin said
she drove to her sister's house and watched the argument
through
a window. She said she thought, "He is gonna blow it." She
left
for a meeting without calling police.
On Aug. 10,
2005, Palin sent an angry, three-page e-mail to Col.
Julia
Grimes, head of the state police: "My concern is that the
public's faith
in the trooper will continue to diminish as more
residents express
concerns regarding the apparent lack of action
towards a trooper whom is
described by many as 'a ticking time
bomb' and a 'loose cannon.' "
The divorce went to trial in
the fall of 2005 while the state police
internal investigation
was pending. Anchorage Superior Court Judge John
Suddock reviewed
the complaints filed by Palin and her family. At trial on
Oct.
27, 2005, the judge expressed puzzlement about why the family
was
trying to get Wooten fired, since depriving the trooper of a
job would
harm his ability to pay family support to Palin's
sister.
On March 1, 2006, Grimes sustained the
allegations, saying, "The record
clearly indicates a serious and
concentrated pattern of unacceptable and
at times, illegal
activity occurring over a lengthy period, which
establishes a
course of conduct totally at odds with the ethics of
our
profession." Wooten was suspended for five days.
That fall, in a surprise, Palin defeated Gov. Frank Murkowski in
the
Republican primary and went on to win the general election.
She took
office in December 2006 and appointed Monegan, who had
just retired as
Anchorage police chief after five years, to be
public safety commissioner,
a Cabinet position.
In
January 2007, Palin's husband, Todd, invited Monegan to the
governor's
office. Todd Palin asked him to look into the Wooten
matter. Monegan did
and later told Todd Palin there was nothing
he could do because the matter
was closed.
Sarah Palin
called Monegan a few days later, and he told her the same
thing,
he told the Washington Post. She brought it up again in
February
2007 in the state capitol building and Monegan warned
her to stay at arm's
length. Telephone inquiries
Monegan said he also got telephone calls from three Palin
appointees,
including her then-chief of staff, Mike Tibbles;
Commissioner Annette
Kreitzer of the Department of Administration
and Attorney General Talis
Colberg.
Colberg said at a
news conference this year that he called after Todd
Palin asked
him about "the process" for when state troopers make
death
threats against the first family.
"I made an
inquiry and was told by Commissioner Monegan that there was
a
process in place and that it was handled and it was over. And I
reported
back to the first gentleman that there was nothing more
that could be
done," Colberg said.
With each of the
calls, Monegan became more concerned and warned each
caller about
exposing the state to litigation from Wooten.
Meanwhile,
Todd Palin continued to collect evidence against his
former
brother-in-law and lobbied for his dismissal, records and
interviews show.
In April 2007, he told the Anchorage Daily News
that he met just once with
Wooten's boss, Col. Audie Holloway, to
give her pictures of Wooten driving
a snowmobile when he was out
on a worker's compensation claim.
Investigations begin
In July, Palin's chief of staff told Monegan he was being fired
because
the governor wanted to "go in a different direction,"
Monegan said.
Monegan went public, saying that his firing
was connected to his failure
to remove Wooten. The state
legislature launched its investigation, and
the governor asked
the attorney general's office to conduct an
internal
investigation.
Alaska Deputy Attorney General
Michael Barnhill said that the review, made
public two weeks ago,
found that half a dozen officials had made about two
dozen phone
calls regarding Wooten. But only one call was determined to
be
improper, a tape-recorded conversation between Palin's chief
of boards and
commissions, Frank Bailey, to a police
lieutenant.
In the call, Bailey said, "Todd and Sarah are
scratching their heads, 'Why
on earth hasn't this, why is this
guy still representing the department?'
"
Palin
suspended Bailey with pay, saying she knew nothing about the
call.
Palin still faces the review by the legislature. Democratic
state Sen.
Hollis French said that Republicans and Democrats
authorized the hiring of
a former prosecutor to determine whether
Palin "used her public office to
settle a private score." The
legislative report is due in
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