More on the Latest News on the Probe of the Ted Stevens Prosecutors

Anchorage—

As described last week, the website www.mainjustice.com has reported that two Alaska-based prosecutors face an allegation that the pair “pressured an FBI agent to falsify a summary of his notes from an interview” with a key government witness in the Ted Stevens trial. The report—available at http://www.mainjustice.com/2010/05/13/fresh-allegations-emerge-in-probe-of-stevens-prosecutors/--is the product of leaks regarding an investigation mounted by special counsel of six lawyers who worked on the five-week trial that concluded in October of 2008.

The article says that the special counsel is probing whether Assistant U.S. Attorneys Joe Bottini and James Goeke leaned on the FBI agent to change statements made by Robert “Rocky” Williams, a long-time VECO employee who worked extensively on the renovations to Stevens’ home in Girdwood, Alaska.

These leaks and allegations are just that—allegations that come with no name attached to anybody doing the alleging. Having said that, these allegations help explain why the probe is taking so long. It’s been more than a year since Judge Emmet Sullivan ordered the investigation, which was announced at the same hearing in April of 2009 that he ordered the case against the Alaska lawmaker dismissed for prosecutorial misconduct. (There’s a second parallel probe into the government’s handling of the Ted Stevens case; that second investigation is being run by the Department of Justice’s own internal watchdog, the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR).)

Joe Palazzolo’s report on www.mainjustice.com states that the special counsel—Washington, D.C. lawyer Henry Schuelke—“is said to have finished interviews and gathering evidence, after roughly a year of investigating the circumstances that led to the collapse of the most prominent public corruption case in decades.”

The special counsel’s probe started after the judge in the Ted Stevens trial reviewed a lengthy complaint from an FBI agent who worked as co-lead agent on the “POLAR PEN” investigation into Alaska public corruption. That eight-page document prepared by Chad Joy listed a number of allegations against his co-lead agent Mary Beth Kepner and the Stevens prosecution team, but—as this report notes—Joy’s complaint/grievance did not include this particular accusation of being pressured over the write-up of an interview of Williams.

The report is also interesting in that it points the finger at Alaska-based Assistant U.S. Attorneys Bottini and Goeke, while previous reports have tended to put on the griddle Washington, D.C. Department of Justice lawyers Nicholas Marsh and Edward Sullivan. Particularly damaging to Marsh and Sullivan were filings by former state lawmakers Pete Kott and Vic Kohring quoting e-mail messages by the two government lawyers showing attitudes towards turning over information to the defense that could be construed as contrary to the discovery obligations of prosecutors.

A conspiracy theorist might note the name of the website—www.mainjustice.com—which reflects both the subject covered and the probable source of the leaks that produced this report. If the Department of Justice’s headquarters in Washington is looking for fall guys in this matter, the Alaska-based prosecutors--far from the higher-ups in our nation's capital--might be seen as good choices for those roles.

Palazzolo’s report says that neither the special counsel nor the watchdog unit OPR have indicated when their probes will end. The article notes that when he is done, special counsel Schuelke “faces a difficult decision” about whether to file criminal charges—such as criminal contempt of court—against any of the six prosecutors from the Stevens trial under scrutiny.

Disclosure: I know Joe Bottini slightly and have known him since around the time we both became lawyers in Alaska in the mid-1980s. As I have said before, I know most of the Alaska-based lawyers who have worked for the federal government or in defense of individuals in the “POLAR PEN” probe.

Great Horses’ Ties to the Great Land

Anchorage—

The Last Frontier’s connections to the Triple Crown continue. Last year Mine That Bird—a horse co-owned by former VECO executive Mark Allen—won the Kentucky Derby before taking second in the Preakness and third in the Belmont Stakes. Last Saturday First Dude—a horse named after Todd Palin, the husband of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin—placed second in the Preakness.

Bill Allen is part of both horses' stories. Mark Allen appears to have bought his share of Mine That Bird out of funds he got after his father sold VECO, and Sarah Palin’s new-face-running-against-the-good-old-boys campaign for Governor in 2006 was substantially aided by the FBI’s searches of legislative offices that concentrated on crimes Bill Allen was involved in.

Report: Problems Get Worse for Ted Stevens Trial Prosecutors

Anchorage--

The website www.mainjustice.com has a disturbing leak today about the special counsel's investigation into the misconduct of the Ted Stevens trial prosecutors. More to come later, but you can see Joe Palazzolo's report at http://www.mainjustice.com/2010/05/13/fresh-allegations-emerge-in-probe-of-stevens-prosecutors/ on the Internet.

Vic Kohring's New Motion for Evidentiary Hearing

Anchorage--

Jill Burke of www.alaskadispatch.com has a summary of ex-State Rep. Vic Kohring's new motion for an evidentiary hearing, filed in March and ordered unsealed last week. You can read her story--plus a link--at http://www.alaskadispatch.com/blogs/political-animal/5201-vic-kohring-alleges-silent-treatment on the Internet.

Here's a Link to the Podcast of My Polaris Lecture on Alaska Public Corruption, Plus a Bleg

Anchorage--

You can listen for free to a recording of the Polaris Lecture that I gave last month at the University of Alaska Anchorage on Alaska public corruption. Here's the link:

http://greenandgold.uaa.alaska.edu/podcasts/index.php?id=388

Theresa Philbrick and I have tried to post on this blog my PowerPoint presentation, but we have been unable to do so. Tips are welcome....

Review of The Fate of Nature, by Charles Wohlforth

Anchorage--






On a break from blogging and book-writing about Alaska public corruption, here's a review of another Alaska-centric book I think is worth reading:






Review of The Fate of Nature, by Charles Wohlforth

Can the earth be saved?

Charles Wohlforth asks this question and tries to answer it in his new book The Fate of Nature.

The focus of the Anchorage-based writer is on the human spirit—“heart”—not technology. Wohlforth combines insights from game theory, animal psychology, and the history of Prince William Sound to explore whether mankind can avoid destroying the planet, particularly its oceans.

The Fate of Nature is both fun and enlightening. This has got to be the only book ever that combines discussions of the behavior of killer whales and ravens with examinations of the 17th-century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes, Teddy Roosevelt, and Aleut baseball. It mixes the lyrical and the wonkish, the pragmatic and the mystical, and it also throws in some nice turns of writing (“Slightly salty bombs of pure freshness explode on the teeth.”)

Wohlforth leveraged his considerable strengths to produce this book:




· There’s deep research. He doesn’t just boat and hike all over coastal Alaska, he gets up before 6 a.m. to call a scientist in Switzerland to talk about altruism, and then manages to end up in the middle of a dispute between a bird expert and an ape specialist that ends with an e-mail reading “All hugs and kisses, Monkeyboy.”





· There are the social skills that allowed him to get close to the daily work of field biologists and into insular Native villages, where he is invited to partake in old traditions like spending hours in a super-hot banya (sauna).






· There’s the substantial background in writing about science, travel, and Alaska politics and history, leavened by lifelong residency on the Last Frontier.




· There’s the experience of the practical politician who has served as an elected municipal government official, giving him a refined understanding of close-to-the-ground decision-making by local communities.




Wohlforth recounts how the conflicts over conservation in the early 1900s shaped the American political system we have today, and also includes a disquieting detour on the historical link between the laudable desire for conservation and the repellent drive for eugenics.

The Fate of Nature is not all heavy history, however: There’s eloquence, passion, and a sense of adventure. One engaging tale previously unknown to me is that of Will Langille, a man from Oregon who first went to Alaska with the Gold Rush. Hired by legendary federal forestry executive Gifford Pinchot, Langille engaged in a one-man reconnaissance of most of the state in 1903 and 1904 and ended up playing a major role in the creation of national forests in Alaska that together are almost as big as Pennsylvania.

Along with a dash of Boy’s Life, the book also contains unflinching discussions of the effects of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill on the otters, birds, and people of Prince William Sound. Wohlforth covered the spill extensively as a reporter for the Anchorage Daily News, and he has acknowledged elsewhere that the disaster launched his career in free-lance writing.

The book emphasizes simple pleasures enjoyed over the long run as opposed to a short-term focus on money and material things. The Fate of Nature also celebrates cooperation and collaboration by well-motivated individuals working on their own and in small groups to figure out and implement solutions to local problems, including by extension the global issues of pollution and environmental protection.

Given Wohlforth’s progressive sympathies, some observers might be surprised by this latter point. Recently, it’s often been Republicans that have been associated with small-government solutions while Democrats are identified with a national approach—think health care reform, for example.

The author would probably say this sort of analysis misses the point, and he would likely use argumentative jujitsu to come at the issue a whole different way. This book calls for engagement that starts at a level outside of politics: People should reach inside and engage with themselves, and thereby improve their own values while trying to make better and deeper connections with those around them.

Wohlforth gave dozens of talks about his book on climate change, The Whale and the Supercomputer, and is likely to make a similar publicity push for this one. One question he may get at those lectures is whether the book implicitly promotes environments that most people just want to see—or even just imagine—and not actually live around. Most people could not spend all their time in beautiful and pristine surroundings, or they wouldn’t be pristine. Most people would not really want to make the sacrifices it would take to live like the Native villagers he portrays. Although the easy availability of seafood (particularly salmon) has traditionally made Prince William Sound an easier place to follow a subsistence lifestyle than in Interior Alaska, anybody who has ever lived in a small subsistence-oriented village—or spent a lot of time with someone who has—knows that such a way of life is hard work and not just an idyllic Eden. Simply living in a tiny town doesn’t mean that everybody will get along, either: It sometimes seems that the smaller the community, the bigger the feud.

In The Fate of Nature, Wohlforth takes stands unpopular with many more boosterish Alaskans and frames issues in a way outside the mold of conventional thinking. This book gives you nice mental pictures and makes you think, and it will appeal to both Alaskans and those who have never been near the Last Frontier.




Disclosures: I have known Charles Wohlforth for more than 15 years. I worked with him while he was a Member of the Anchorage Assembly and I was an in-house attorney at the Municipality of Anchorage. I own property—and am the vice president and manager of a corporation that sells real estate—at a Prince William Sound location mentioned repeatedly in this book.


Update--You can check out the website for the book at www.fateofnature.com on the Internet.

Play-Acting the Ben Stevens and Bill Allen Relationship

Anchorage—

The Alaska Dispatch has released a video dramatizing an FBI tape of a 2006 telephone conversation. The production features ex-lawmaker Andrew Halcro playing his former legislative colleague Ben Stevens and long-time Anchorage theatre personality Dick Reichman doing an impression of the halting Bill Allen. It’s worth watching at http://www.alaskadispatch.com/dispatches/features/4924-file-no-194a-an-13620 on the Internet.