The Anchorage Press: Anatomy of a scandal
Anatomy of a scandal
Brendan Joel Kelley / Associate Editor
At this stage of Wootengate—eight days since the allegations started flying—an investigation by the legislature into conflicting statements between former Department of Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan and Governor Sarah Palin seems inevitable. Really, it can’t happen soon enough.
One of the two seems to be lying to the public. Last Friday, a day into the jousting, Monegan said that he’d been pressured by Todd Palin and members of the Palin administration to fire Trooper Mike Wooten, the Governor’s former brother-in-law. That evening, Sharon Leighow, the Governor’s spokesperson, emailed me, “at no time did Todd Palin or anyone from the administration pressure Commissioner Monegan to fire Trooper Wooten.”
It’s pretty cut-and-dry. An investigation is needed to illuminate whether the Governor and her administration abused the power of her office to interfere in trooper personnel matters, and also whether she or Monegan lied in the aftermath of the supposed revelations.
While we’re left with this cliffhanger and a continuing barrage of accusations from both sides, it’s interesting to look at how the scandal developed. It played out in the media via a series of blogs, single-outlet interviews and a couple of press conferences, with the storyline getting murkier at every turn.
Andrew Halcro—former political rival and relentless critic of the Governor—broke the scandal first on his blog (www.andrewhalcro.com), which is sort of unusual in and of itself. Not unusual that Halcro would post something slamming Palin, but unusual in that he did some actual digging. Most “citizen journalist” bloggers might make it to a press conference or trial, but they don’t have a network of sources nor are they prone to sitting down and conducting exclusive one-on-one interviews like Halcro did.
According to Halcro, he was initially examining why Monegan was dismissed from his post as Commissioner of DPS, focusing on budget disputes between the Commissioner and the Governor. Then he received a call last Wednesday morning from someone saying he should speak to Trooper Wooten. He called Wooten, spoke to him for about a half-hour, then called his sources to see if Wooten was credible—“I wasn’t interested, obviously, in chasing any rabbit trails,” he says. He felt comfortable with what he heard, so he got together with Wooten Wednesday night for nearly four hours, going through Wooten’s court transcripts, personnel file, and trooper investigation file.
Thursday morning about 1 a.m. Halcro posted a lengthy entry on his blog, alleging that both the budget disparities and the Wooten issue had led to Monegan being dismissed. At the time, Monegan wouldn’t talk about Wooten or DPS personnel matters.
Thursday afternoon, Public Safety Employees Association Executive Director John Cyr called a press conference and released the troopers’ investigations of Wooten to the media. This seemed like a response to the uproar resulting from Halcro’s blog post, but it wasn’t. Halcro says that when he spoke to Wooten Wednesday, the trooper told him that he’d already authorized his attorney and his union to release any and all documents related to him to the media. The documents didn’t make Wooten out to be an angel—on the contrary, he sounds like a prick—but still, if the Governor pressured Monegan to fire Wooten when the troopers had already dealt with his infractions, and subsequently fired Monegan because he didn’t take action against Wooten, that would be an abuse of her power.
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