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Palin conducts her own public safety investigation

by Jason Moore
Tuesday, Aug. 12, 2008

ANCHORAGE, Alaska-- The Palin administration is under attack by critics who say it may be engaging in witness tampering.

Alaska Attorney General Talis Colberg has launched an inquiry into former Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan.

This comes despite the governor's earlier claims that an investigation was not warranted.

Colberg's office is interviewing officials in the public safety department before an independent probe by the Legislature begins.

John Cyr, head of the public safety union, is suspicious of the attorney general's inquiry.

"None of this happened until a special investigator was named and now, all of a sudden, the attorney general's office is interested and is talking with people," Cyr said.

Special investigator Steve Branchflower, who was hired by the Legislature, hasn't even started his interviews, yet the inquiry coordinated by Colberg and Palin is already questioning those same witnesses.

"If this were a criminal case you'd call it witness tampering. I mean, it's not a criminal case, it's an investigation, but it certainly seems to me a flagrant abuse of power," Cyr said.

Colberg denied the allegations.

"It's not at all witness tampering. It's an inquiry into what people know at least at our end of the picture here," said Colberg.

The Legislature hired the investigator to find out whether Monegan's ouster was in fact related to pressure the former commissioner claims he felt from Palin's office to fire Alaska State Trooper Mike Wooten, the governor's former brother-in-law.

Colberg says the administration launched its own inquiry after Sen. Hollis French, who is overseeing the Legislature's investigation, was quoted as saying it could lead to impeachment.

"Then Sen. French unfortunately amplified the issue by raising the specter of impeachment in the Wall Street Journal, in the national media, before he'd even named an investigator. And so although the Legislature asked this be unbiased and politics be kept at arms length it raises concerns," said Colberg.

French says his quote on impeachment was taken out of context and he says no one from the administration ever called to clarify it.

French says he wants the Legislature's investigator to sit in on any future interviews on the Monegan case.

"Her decision to have her attorney general to go ahead, or his decision on his own, speaks to, I think, their concern about the evidence that may be inside the administration regarding their handling of the Monegan dismissal and the Wooten case," said French.

For now French dismisses the claims of witness tampering or abuse of power by the governor regarding the attorney general's inquiry.

He says it's never wrong for someone to ask what happened.

French says he expects the Legislature's investigator to ask the attorney general to provide taped copies of the interviews conducted by the attorney general's office.

Contact Jason Moore at jmoore@ktuu.com