Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin (31 page)

Sarah latched onto the “crack whores” comment and took it to the bank. We had meetings, made phone calls, created strategies, and sent emails (that were also removed from this book at the request of the Alaska attorney general's office); and we all invested considerable resources to remove the thorn known as the Dan Fagan radio show from her side. She even tried unsuccessfully to drag other commissioners into the skirmish. Wielding her influence to make a mark in what was scheduled as a meeting about supporting local little league, she encouraged a local businessman to rethink his sponsorship of Fagan's radio show.

While Sarah resolved to never listen, she failed miserably to do so. With her approval, we went after Fagan's sponsors, including computer, furniture, and mattress stores, as well as an Italian restaurant that ran commercials during his broadcasts. In addition to letter writing, we sent them CDs of the offending shows. Sarah reacted by yelling, “Yayy!” In many instances, if she missed the live broadcast, we continued—as we'd done on and off for the past year—to access a podcast or, even more time consuming, a transcript. She also pushed commissioners and government experts to phone in to defend her. Needless to say, we conducted little government business during these hours of listening and plotting.

More troubling than Dan Fagan was the sudden black eye Sarah had suffered because of her handling of the state-owned Matanuska Maid (Mat Maid) Dairy. Mat Maid had lost $600,000 in 2005 and 2006, and the state Creamery Board decided to shut down the business in the spring of 2007. Sarah felt so strongly that Mat Maid should continue operating that she fired the entire state Board of Agriculture and Conservation—which appointed the Creamery Board—and installed her own appointees, who promptly reversed the closure decision. Critics, led by Andrew Halcro, slammed the measure. Three months later, with the dairy having lost another $300,000, the governor was forced to admit that she'd fired the original board in error and that it had
made the correct decision. Nevertheless, she continued to drag her feet in deciding how to proceed. Stubbornly costing the state more money, she delayed closure, believing that Alaska would find a buyer to take over the money pit. Todd, recognizing the obvious before his wife did, panicked and sent an urgent email on September 10 to Kris Perry and me that included the following plea:

Todd was not alone in begging the governor to face reality. A concerned Bruce Anders wrote,
“Keeping alive the myth of a solvent mat maid will cause more pain down the road . . . we may not like halcro, but on this issue he is correct. Shut it down, stop the hemorrhaging.”

Finally, in December, Sarah relented and auctioned off the equipment after finding nobody willing to take on a business that had no prospects for making money. Months earlier, Todd, seeking to deflect criticism of his wife, had asked me to do opposition research on Mat Maid director Terry Clark, a vocal Sarah critic. I discovered nothing damaging, however, and we had little ammunition for attacking him.

Unlike most issues in which Sarah held a personal grudge, the Mat Maid furor died relatively quickly. For the handful of hardcore critics like Halcro and Fagan, this incident remained a stain on her record as a fiscal conservative, but, frankly, the vast majority of Alaskans either did not understand the issues involved or simply forgot about it. As for remaining critics such as Andrew Halcro, Sarah hyperbolically expressed herself by suggesting in one email,
“halcro is a lying $+*#_.”
Moments later, she added that he “
is a sinful liar.”
A staffer then raised the ante with her own embellishment: Halcro
“is an insulting, arrogant, piece of crap, flippin' liar.”

At least as unwelcome as the Mat Maid affair was Legislative Director John Bitney's reckless fling with the wife of Todd's best friend.

Bitney, championed by his buddy Mike Tibbles, had been hired in part because of his Wasilla connection: he and Sarah had played in the high school band together. But now Bitney was little more than administration dirty laundry. Once found guilty of a breach of loyalty, nothing he did was going to be good enough, and in Sarah and Todd's eyes, he needed to be jettisoned. In July 2007 Sarah ordered Tibbles to fire his friend.

Two weeks later, Bitney, still employed, turned up at a reunion picnic held for former campaign workers. When he began playing guitar for the crowd, it was as if Bitney were attempting to win affection by entertaining those he hoped were still friends. The pastoral setting in Palmer, at the hand-crafted home of the Bensons, on acres of farmland with horses, a warming sun, succulent barbecue, and views of Pioneer Peak, had no effect on cooling Sarah's temper. She cared nothing for Bitney's apparently contrite appeal for forgiveness. Afterward, the moment Sarah climbed into the Suburban for the drive home to Wasilla, she punched the speed dial to her chief of staff.

“Mike, I want John Bitney gone! And next time I tell you to fire someone, I don't want to wait two flippin' weeks! Period.”

Yet later that day, Tibbles, even under direct threat from a rabid governor, beat around the bush. He indicated to Bitney that he was being placed on unpaid leave. The final reckoning reportedly didn't come until Bitney, while traveling, discovered his government-issued BlackBerry turned off and his name removed from the state's employment directory. He received official notice only after he phoned Tibbles and asked about his status. Sarah never did provide Bitney an explanation, but she did issue a public statement claiming that the parties had “mutually agreed he would leave his post for personal reasons.” No question, from Sarah's point of view, the reason was personal; but there was no mutual agreement. For a short time after this, Bitney became the newest enemy, relegating Mike Wooten temporarily to the back burner.

Almost immediately, Sarah faced questions about Bitney's firing, especially from blogger Andrew Halcro. To members of her team, she explained only a week after Bitney's firing that he should have been let go two weeks earlier for what she called “distractions” that made the
quality of his work suffer. That he was allowed an administrative leave now annoyed her, and she threatened to “set the record straight” and let the world know exactly why he was let go. “I won't protect his reputation,” she said as if he were there to hear her threats.

While not engrossed in the marathon madness of the Mike Wooten attacks, we mobilized to go after Bitney. A few weeks after his dismissal, Sarah wrote of him in an office email:

Eventually Sarah wrote,
“Damnit. He's a liar and a slimy lying prick.”
Sarah and Kris Perry immediately took to monitoring the reviled
Anchorage Daily News
website for clues that Bitney and his allies were on the attack, as you can see from the following email (emphasis mine):

In another email, she employed the same logic as when blaming Ruedrich for campaign hiccups and Wooten for falsifying family rumors. Despite the lack of hard evidence, she anointed Bitney the person behind a new wave of attacks on the administration and her
family. When Todd's employment as an oil field worker became a minor conflict-of-interest controversy, Sarah blamed Bitney. If Fagan had a negative allegation, it came from bitter-liar Bitney.

Sarah, in warning Chief of Staff Tibbles to be careful, was taking no chance with damaging leaks. In this same message, she confirmed that she was still on top of her cyber critics, some of whom were undoubtedly John Bitney:
“From the vindictive blog entries to the last few days of media blow-ups, to the timing of all this—it all points to Bitney. Huge distraction.”

In suggesting this was a
huge distraction
, Sarah was most definitely correct.

Understanding the stakes to him personally, ex-Bitney pal Mike Tibbles joined in waging battle:

Sarah must have nodded her head as she typed a sarcastic reply to Tibbles:
“What a loyal ‘long-time' friend that bitney has turned out to be.”

Just as she'd done time after time in overreacting to events and rumors that might have withered under their own inconsequentiality,
Sarah elevated tensions unnecessarily. And we went along. As always, her inner circle understood that our failure to pick up arms and fight alongside her might result in our own BlackBerrys being disconnected and our names deleted from employee records.

The manner in which Bitney was handled became a dry run—albeit on a smaller and less noteworthy scale—for Department of Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan's eventual dismissal in July 2008. As she'd done to the Mat Maid board and later with Monegan, Sarah disposed of people, then obscured her reasons through deceit and counterattack.

And while Bitney was front and center for a few weeks, if I'd hoped that there was any chance Todd would not return to
our favorite trooper
, I was to be disappointed. When Wooten reemerged, he would never go away again.

21
 

Wooten-mania

I
n a September 1, 2008, Ethics Disclosure form, Sarah, through her attorney Thomas Van Flein, stated: “The Palin family did not learn the results of this investigation [into Wooten] and did not learn the results of the Grimes' discipline until after she replaced Commissioner Monegan.” Over the summer, Sarah had raised the stakes even higher when she said, “To allege that I, or any member of my family, requested, received or released confidential personnel information on an Alaska State Trooper . . . is, quite simply, outrageous.” Todd, in response to a subpoena dated September 12, 2008, added to their collective denial by stating, “Not until Wooten released, and the ADN posted, his personnel records . . . did I learn that there was a completed internal review by Colonel Grimes and what was done. I learned that there was a ten-day suspension ordered.” Not only did they know about the Grimes findings, but Todd, using Sarah's email account (thus it's hard to argue that she was ignorant of the truth), shared these “confidential” understandings with Lisa Demer at the
Anchorage Daily News
as far back as April 11, 2006 (emphasis mine):