Palin team pushed hard for trooper's ouster Ex-brother-in-law was focus of dozens of calls to his boss

Alaska Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan, a member of the Village Public Safety Officer task force, talks about the state funded program at his office in Anchorage, Alaska Monday Jan. 28, 2008. A seven-member panel released a report to the state Senate on Friday Feb. 1, calling for significant changes in the Village Public Safety Officer program including hefty pay raises, more than doubling the size of the force and enlisting help from agencies to develop acceptable housing where needed. (AP Photo/Al Grillo) less Alaska Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan, a member of the Village Public Safety Officer task force, talks about the state funded program at his office in Anchorage, Alaska Monday Jan. 28, 2008. A ... more Photo: Al Grillo, AP Photo: Al Grillo, AP Image 1 of / 4 Caption Close Palin team pushed hard for trooper's ouster 1 / 4 Back to Gallery

The 2007 state fair was days away when Alaska's public safety commissioner, Walt Monegan, took another call about one of his troopers, Michael Wooten. This time, the director of Gov. Sarah Palin's Anchorage office was on the line.

As Monegan recalls it, the aide said the governor had heard that Wooten was assigned to work the kickoff to the fair in late August. If so, Monegan should do something about it, because Palin was also planning to attend and did not want the trooper nearby.

Somewhat bewildered, Monegan soon determined that Wooten had indeed volunteered for duty at the fairgrounds - in full costume as "Safety Bear," the troopers' child-friendly mascot.

Two years earlier, the trooper and the governor's sister had been embroiled in a nasty divorce and child-custody battle that had hardened the Palin family against him. To Monegan and several top aides, the state fair episode was yet another example of a fixation that the governor and her husband, Todd, had with Wooten and the most granular details of his life.

"I thought to myself, 'Man, do they have a heavy-duty network and focus on this guy,' " Monegan said. "You'd call that an obsession."

On July 11, Palin fired Monegan, setting off a politically charged scandal that has become vastly more charged since Palin became the Republican vice presidential nominee.

The outlines of the matter have been widely reported. Monegan believes he was ousted because he would not bow to pressure to dismiss Wooten. The Alaska Legislature is investigating the firing and whether the governor abused the powers of her office to pursue a personal vendetta. Its report is due today.

Palin has denied that anyone told Monegan to dismiss Wooten, or that the commissioner's ouster had anything to do with the trooper. But an examination of the case, based on interviews with Monegan and several top aides, indicates that, to a far greater degree than was previously known, the governor, her husband and her administration pressed the commissioner and his staff to get Wooten off the force, though without directly ordering it.

In all, the commissioner and his aides were contacted about Wooten three dozen times over 19 months by the governor, her husband and seven administration officials, interviews and documents show.

Campaign to 'get rid of him'

"To all of us, it was a campaign to get rid of him as a trooper and, at the very least, to smear the guy and give him a desk job somewhere," said Kim Peterson, Monegan's special assistant and a 31-year veteran of state government, who like several other aides spoke publicly about the matter for the first time.

The governor's office's interest in the Wooten case did not end with Monegan, the examination shows. His successor, Chuck Kopp, recalled that in an exploratory phone call and then a job interview, Palin's aides mentioned the governor's concerns about Wooten. None of the 280 other troopers were discussed, Kopp said.

Immediately after Monegan's firing, Palin said her intent was to change the department's direction. (She declined to be interviewed for this article.) She has since offered a variety of explanations for his ouster, most recently accusing him of insubordination and opposing her fiscal reforms.

As evidence, she has contended, among other things, that Monegan arranged two unauthorized lobbying trips to Washington. But, according to interviews and records obtained by the New York Times, both trips were authorized by the governor's office.

As for Wooten, Palin has said she and others were simply lodging legitimate complaints to the appropriate authorities about a trooper with a disciplinary record who was a danger to her family and to the public.

Palin initially said she welcomed an investigation into Monegan's ouster. But she has since declined to cooperate with the bipartisan inquiry. Palin has pledged to cooperate with a separate inquiry, by the state's Personnel Board.

Began before governorship

The Palin family's dispute with Wooten surfaced long before Palin became governor.

On April 11, 2005, the day Palin's sister, Molly McCann, filed for divorce, her father, Chuck Heath, informed the state police that a domestic-violence restraining order had been served on his son-in-law. Heath later told the state police that, although Wooten had not physically harmed McCann, he had intimidated her. McCann told authorities that Wooten had said to her that he would shoot Heath if he hired her a divorce lawyer and would "take down" Sarah Palin if she got involved.

The family also reported that Wooten, who was assigned to the wildlife investigations unit, shot a moose without a permit, used a Taser on his 10-year-old stepson and drank a beer at a friend's barbecue before taking a second one for the drive home in his patrol car.

In March 2006, after an internal inquiry, Wooten received a 10-day suspension, which was eventually halved. The suspension letter mentions nothing about threats. At the time, Wooten and McCann had been divorced for about two months.

On Jan. 4, 2007, a month into the Palin administration and his tenure as public safety commissioner, Monegan went to the governor's Anchorage office to talk with Todd Palin, who had requested the meeting. Todd Palin was seated at a conference table with three stacks of personnel files. That, Monegan recalled, was the first time he heard the name Mike Wooten.

"He conveyed to me that he and Sarah did not think the investigation into Wooten had been done well enough and that they were not happy with the punishment," Monegan said. "Todd was clearly frustrated."

Todd Palin pressured

Todd Palin noted Wooten's divorce case but dwelt on the moose kill, Monegan recalled. The commissioner said he would have his staff evaluate the evidence.

A few days later, Monegan informed Todd Palin that the issues raised at the meeting had been addressed in Wooten's suspension. The case was closed.

Todd Palin sounded vexed and said repeatedly that Wooten was getting away with a crime, Monegan said.

Several evenings later, Monegan's cell phone rang. "Walt, it's Sarah," the governor said before echoing much of what her husband had said. Wooten, he recalls being told, was "not the kind of person we should want as a trooper." He told the governor, too, that there was no new evidence to pursue.

Soon after that, Todd Palin and several aides began pressing the public safety agency to investigate another matter: whether Wooten was fraudulently collecting workers' compensation for a back injury he said he had suffered while helping carry a body bag.

Todd Palin declined to be interviewed. But in a sworn affidavit this week for the legislative investigation, he wrote that he had hundreds of communications about the trooper "with my family, with friends, with colleagues and with just about everyone I could, including government officials."

As for what he had told his wife, Todd Palin said he often raised his concerns about "the unfairness of his remaining on the state troopers when he was obviously so unfit for the job."

Monegan fired

Of the dozen calls Monegan's assistant Peterson received about Wooten, she said, at least half were from Dianne Kiesel, a deputy director at the Department of Administration. The last discussion with Kiesel came after Peterson informed her that the trooper had been cleared to work full time.

"Since there was now no business reason to separate Wooten, she wanted to know what else we could do with him," Peterson said, adding, "I could tell she was under pressure to come up with something."

As for Wooten's planned appearance as Safety Bear, Monegan said he decided to pull him back.

In July, Palin's acting chief of staff called Monegan to another meeting in that same room in the governor's Anchorage office. The aide, Michael Nizich, said the governor wanted him to head the Alcoholic Beverage Control Board, part of the public safety department. Put another way, he was no longer commissioner.

Wooten, who declined to be interviewed for this article, remains on the force as a patrol trooper.