Geoffrey Dunn calls Frank Bailey out over his numerous ommissions of important information in "Blind Allegiance" and the fact that his allegiance to the Palins may continue to this day.

Courtesy of the Anchorage Press:

On July 28, 2009, Lisa Demer of the Anchorage Daily News reported online that "two of former Gov. Sarah Palin's most trusted aides are resigning and won't be part of the new Parnell administration... One is the controversial Frank Bailey, Palin's director of boards and commissions and a central player in the Troopergate case." The other was Kris Perry. According to Demer, Bailey's departure date was set for August 15. Bailey says nothing about this in Blind Allegiance. Nada. 

Once again, the word on the street in Anchorage that summer was that Sean Parnell refused to take on Bailey in his new administration. Bailey was tainted goods. Nor was Bailey offered a position at SarahPAC, Palin's then-recently formed political action committee, for which Stapleton had been hired as a spokesperson. Bailey's rendition of formally breaking his bond with Palin World is either contemptibly disingenuous or tragically pathetic. Palin had tossed Bailey under the bus long before he had his leaving- Palin-World epiphany on August 27, 2009, to which he devotes an entire chapter. By then, Palin had already thrown Bailey away like yesterday's trash. 

More significantly, Bailey's continued demonization in Blind Allegiance of the likes of Mike Wooten, John Bitney and, most significantly, Andree McLeod - all of whom were victimized by the Palin machine and by Bailey himself, and all of whom have had the courage to stand up to Palin in meaningful ways, without benefit of a payday - indicates that Bailey still doesn't fully grasp the political dynamics of what Palin and her administration did to their victims and to the democratic process in Alaska. 

Bailey has the audacity to opine about Wooten that "he is not a sympathetic person, and, arguably, has no place in law enforcement." This, he writes about a guy he has never met, about whom he admits that many of the charges levied against him by the Palins were grossly exaggerated, and against whom he conducted a shameful two-year campaign to have fired. Who is Bailey kidding with such assessments? Let's not forget that Wooten served 10 years in the U.S. Air Force, participated in a trio of U.S. military operations in the Persian Gulf War - Desert Storm, Desert Shield and Restore Hope - served another three years in the Air National Guards Reserves, and - with the exception of his problems with the Palins, her family, her friends and Bailey - served without incident as a State Trooper for roughly a decade. When I interviewed other Troopers about Wooten, all of them said they'd want him at their side in the trenches. Like a lot of other "Fox News conservatives" - Todd and Sarah Palin being at the top of the list - Bailey rendered no such service. Talk about gall. 

Bailey's self-admonitions in Blind Allegiance amount to little more than flagellatory wrist-slaps. Near the end he concedes, "We hadn't been good Christians. Far from it. We were dishonest and behaved in a vindictive and hateful manner." Yuh think? 

In respect to Wooten he writes: 

"And what, I wish to heaven I'd asked myself, was the importance to our job of governing Alaska in destroying Mike Wooten, and how was that remotely worth the hundreds and hundreds of man-hours spent trying to do so? How, for the love of God, would destroying him personally and professionally make the first family safer, as Sarah and Todd swore over and over was their main concern? 

This tale, unfortunately, includes the worst of Sarah's dysfunctional psyche and administration, including the compulsion to attack enemies, deny truth, play victim, and employ outright deception."

It also reveals the level of Bailey's sycophancy. He was riding shotgun with the Palins the entire sordid journey.On a personal level, Bailey, it would seem to me, still has some deeper penance to serve, some deeper encounter with his Christian values to explore. But that's between Bailey and his god. 

Politically, it's time for the former "Hatchet Man" to do the right thing. He knows that the Petumenos investigation was a sham - marred by misinformation, the withholding of critical documents, missing emails and testimony that doesn't fully jibe with the historical record. Never once during the course of his tenure with Palin - not a single time - did he ever register a meaningful protest against any of her actions. Not once. That's the real tragedy of Blind Allegiance. That for all his professed Christian faith and Christian values, Frank Bailey had no spine, no moral center. He was no different than the Palins.

As many of you are aware, I am friends with both Geoffrey Dunn and Joe McGinniss.

During the unfortunate incident which proceeded the publication of Blind Allegiance, Geoffrey and I e-mailed each other back and forth several times, trying to make sense of what had just happened and why.

During those e-mails, and phone calls, Geoffrey (Who had also read the manuscript), clued me in that there were some serious omissions in the manuscript and even blatant attempts by Bailey to polish up his image, and avoid potential legal trouble. He made it clear then that he was not going to let Bailey's version of events go unchallenged.

This article in the Anchorage Press which Geoffrey has written should bring you up to speed as to what he was alluding to back then.  I urge you to read all of it (Believe me there's a lot more), even though it may force you to reexamine what you think you know about Frank Bailey's character, his religious conviction, and his honesty.

As many of us have long suspected, Bailey may very well have purposefully left many damaging things about the Palins out of his book. Perhaps he did so to provide some continued protection for Todd and Sarah (As it seems clear he is not completely deprogrammed yet), but also to resurrect his damaged reputation, and to save himself from possible criminal proceedings.

FBI might be prepared to investigate News Corps under RICO statutes. In other words the same statutes they use to investigate the Mafia.

Courtesy of AdWeek:

Well-sourced information coming out of the Department of Justice and the FBI suggests a debate is going on that could result in the recently launched investigations of News Corp. falling under the RICO statutes. 

RICO, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, establishes a way to prosecute the leaders of organizations—and strike at the organizations themselves—for crimes company leaders may not have directly committed, but which were otherwise countenanced by the organization. Any two of a series of crimes that can be proven to have occurred within a 10-year period by members of the organization can establish a pattern of racketeering and result in draconian remedies. In 1990, following the indictment of Michael Milken for insider trading, Drexel Burnham Lambert, the firm that employed him, collapsed in the face of a RICO investigation. 

Among the areas that the FBI is said to be looking at in its investigation of News Corp. are charges that one of its subsidiaries, News America Marketing, illegally hacked the computer system of a competitor, Floorgraphics, and then, using the information it had gleaned, tried to extort it into selling out to News Corp.; allegations that relationships the New York Post has maintained with New York City police officers may have involved exchanges of favors and possibly money for information; and accusations that Fox chief Roger Ailes sought to have an executive in the company, the book publisher Judith Regan, lie to investigators about details of her relationship with New York police commissioner Bernie Kerik in order to protect the political interests of Rudy Giuliani, then a presidential prospect. 

Here is where the RICO logic comes in. The usual path of a criminal investigation follows the crimes back to the source—that’s what happened to News Corp. in the U.K. when the royal family discovered that its voice mail messages were appearing in the press. But in a RICO investigation, you are really following the ethos and methods of operation of a group or organization to the crime. In other words, criminal activity is not seen as an isolated or particular event—as News Corp. has desperately and unsuccessfully tried to portray the crimes that occurred in the U.K.—but as an established pattern of conduct. 

As it happens, much of this pattern of conduct at News Corp. has long been hiding in plain sight. How the company has gotten away with such behavior is, in fact, a subtext of the investigations that are now unfolding. 

Partly, the company has escaped legal scrutiny because this is a boys-will-be-boys sort of story. News Corp.’s by-any-means aggressiveness has become so much a part of its identity that it seemed almost redundant to find fault with it. Everybody knew but nobody—for both reasons of fear and profit—did anything about it; hence its behavior has become, however unpleasant, accepted. 

And partly, it’s because the fundamental currency of the company has always been reward and punishment. Both the New York Post and Fox News maintain enemy lists. Almost anyone who has directly crossed these organizations, or who has made trouble for their parent company, will have felt the sting here. That sting involves regular taunting and, often, lies—Obama is a Muslim. (Or, if not outright lies, radical remakes of reality.) Threats pervade the company’s basic view of the world. “We have stuff on him,” Murdoch would mutter about various individuals who I mentioned during my interviews with him. “We have pictures.” 

Similarly, the Post and Fox News heap praise and favors on partisans, who in turn do them favors (the police, in New York as well as London, receive and return the favors). 

This reward and punishment has translated into substantial political power, both in terms of regulatory advantages and, too, in the ability of the company to shield itself from the kind of scrutiny that it has taken a perfect storm of events to have it now receive.

Use the same methods to investigate News Corp that the FBI used to investigate, and imprison, Mafia members? 

Considering what we know about how Fox News has used its influence to control elections, cover up for their favorite politicians, and attack competitors, it makes perfect sense to me.

FBI to contact actor Jude Law to gather evidence of News Corp phone hacking in the United States.

Courtesy of the BBC News:

The FBI plans to contact the actor Jude Law following claims that his mobile phone was hacked during a visit to the US, officials have told the BBC.

It is alleged that a 2003 story by the News of the World newspaper was based on information from Law's voicemail.

If the accusation were true, Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation could face charges in the US.

An article in the News of the World published on published on 7 September 2003 gave a detailed account of the actor's communications with his assistant.

Law's phone would have been using an American mobile network if used in the US, which could open the door to charges under US federal law, says the BBC's Steve Kingstone in New York.

Every time I see a story about the investigation moving to US soil it just makes me that much more convinced that the noose is tightening around the flabby neck of Fox News.  And it never fails to put a HUGE smile on my face at the thought.

And by the way the irony that the most damaging evidence against News Corp might come from the British actors that they harassed the most, like Hugh Grant and Jude Law, is not lost on me either.

We knew it was coming! Fox News has "Brain Room" where the phone records of Americans are being hacked.

Courtesy of Business Insider:

A former producer with Fox News claimed in a lengthy essay gaining new traction this week that the conservative television station has a "Brain Room" in its New York headquarters, which enables employees to view private telephone records with ease.

Though published years ago, the allegations have returned to relevance in the wake of the phone hacking scandals that have rocked News Corporation to its very core, threatening to topple one of the world's largest and most powerful media conglomerates.

According to former Fox News executive Dan Cooper, whose gripes with his former employer run quite deep, Fox News chief Roger Ailes allegedly had him design the so-called "Brain Room" to facilitate counter-intelligence efforts and other "black ops."

In a lengthy 2008 diatribe said to have doubled as a book pitch, Cooper claimed his own phone records had been hacked by Fox News employees, who he says used them to pinpoint him as a source used by David Brock, who founded liberal watchdog group Media Matters.

"Ailes knew I had given Brock the interview," he wrote. "Certainly Brock didn't tell him. Of course. Fox News had gotten Brock's telephone records from the phone company, and my phone number was on the list. Deep in the bowels of 1211 Avenue of the Americas, News Corporation's New York headquarters, was what Roger called the Brain Room. Most people thought it was simply the research department of Fox News. But unlike virtually everybody else, because I had to design and build the Brain Room, I knew it also housed a counterintelligence and black ops office. So accessing phone records was easy pie."

See?  I told you it would lead back to Fox News!

My fervent hope is that the FBI get themselves a search warrant and GAIN ACCESS TO THAT ROOM!

Ladies and gentlemen I would bet my house that if they could get in there THAT would be the end of Fox News, Roger Ailes, and Rupert Murdoch.  There is no doubt in my mind.

You know the part that really pisses me off?  That I already KNEW about this story, and even wrote about it, but it completely slipped my mind until I read this article.

Some investigative reporter I turned out to be.

Senator Lisa Murkowski addresses sex trafficking in Alaska.

Courtesy of Alaska News:

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said today that something must be done about the epidemic of domestic violence, sexual assault and sex trafficking among Alaska Natives and American Indians nationwide.

"The statistics on violence and assault are staggering, and whether it's one in three or one in four, any act of violence is unacceptable," Murkowski said in opening remarks at a Senate Committee on Indian Affairs hearing.

"I meet with far too many Alaskans who tell me things may be worse - there is so much whispered and silenced into the shadows, which damages not just the victims, but also their families," she said.

Murkowski's first question was to the Department of Justice, asking an associate attorney general, "Young women are being hunted. You've got predators waiting outside homeless teen shelters, going to events like the Alaska Federation of Natives conference. What is the Department of Justice doing to target these sex traffickers?"

I am very glad that Senator Murkowski is finally addressing this issue.


This has been one of Alaska's most terrible, and shameful secrets going back decades, and it is well past time that somebody well connected politically brought it out of the shadows and did something substantial to institute laws and educational programs to finally address the issue head on.

However I fear that Murkowki may not truly understand the depth of this problem. Here is how it was explained in a news report from December 2010, by the Fairbanks Newsminer:

Sex traffickers use a combination of mind games and beatings, promises and drugs to control girls, authorities said.

Alaska Native girls are commonly lured from their hometowns by friends or relatives who are already working as prostitutes. They invite the girl to come hang out and go shopping rent-free.

About one-third of the women arrested this year for prostitution in Anchorage are Alaska Native, according to Lacey's figures.

It was an Alaska Native girl who moved to Anchorage to stay with family at the age of 12 who helped point investigators toward another prostitution kingpin: Don Webster, also known as Jerry Starr, Goeden said.

Webster, who was sentenced to 30 years in prison in 2008, had tried to recruit the girl, Goeden said.

The FBI agent got to know the teen during visits to a youth jail. The pair talked about how the girl ended up selling her body at age 14 in Anchorage.

"Her response to me was, 'I could be back home in the village where I could be having sex with my grandpa for free, or I could be here getting paid for me,'" Goeden said.

"I didn't know what to say. I had no idea how to respond to this little girl."

 That is not a problem which a few stricter laws, or a few more rural community sex education classes, will solve.  This is a problem with deep roots in how some in the native community view women, how these women often view themselves, and how outsiders take advantage of these vulnerabilities.

If Senator Murkowski is serious about tackling this problem she needs recognize that this is going to require serious money going toward education in rural communities, providing much easier access to specially trained and licensed counselors, and an increase in a law enforcement presence that can go to a village to remove a child who is being molested immediately and put them someplace where they feel safe and will talk about their rapist without fear of being placed back into their homes.

(For those who are interested, I also addressed this terrible problem in an earlier post entitled Alaska's Secret Shame.)