Was Olson Wearing the Wire? [NO]

[Later: Anonymous points out in a comment below that Lisa Demer's ADN article says the FBI were in the next booth taping the conversation. Given they were listening to Bill Allen's phone, they would have tipped off about the breakfast meeting.]

At Alaskan Abroad, Dillon speculates from the conversations cited in the indictment that Senator Olson was cooperating with the Feds.

The question that comes to mind reading the Cowdery indictment is whether Sen. Donny Olson was cooperating with the feds at the time of the June 25, 2006 breakfast meeting with Cowdery? You have to hope so, otherwise it's pretty hard to explain away this conversation:

According to the indictment, Bill Allen asked Olson: "So you need . . . some money here pretty quick, huh?"

Olson nodded his head affirmatively and told Allen that he could use his money "to get out there" and campaign.

Olson: How much are you good for?

Allen: What?

Olson: How much are you good for?

Allen: Oh, we can probably go 25.

Olson: That's a good start...

In the previous trials, only one had an active informant throughout - the Anderson trial. Frank Prewitt, helped set up the scheme that got Anderson indicted, was wearing a wire. That was in 2004 already. (After Allen agreed to cooperate he made one call to Pete Kott to get him to verify something on tape - I think it was about getting money for polls done by Dave Dittman. And there was only one situation in the Kohring trial I recall - a meal with Frank Prewitt who carried the wire.)

Allen and Smith weren't brought into the FBI office until the end of August 2006. Before that they didn't know they were being listened to. So in June 2006 neither of them would have been carrying a wire.

But if Allen and Smith weren't working undercover yet, who was carrying the wire? Since Cowdery is the one being indicted, it wouldn't have been him.

The FBI was monitoring Suite 604 in the Baranof Hotel and was listening to Allen's and Smith's telephones. But in the previous trials, when there was tape from a restaurant conversation, one of the people in the conversation was carrying a mic or a video camera. Or was there another person at the breakfast? The indictment says:

On or about June 25, 2006, COWDERY met with COMPANY CEO and
State Senator A for breakfast at a restaurant located in Anchorage, Alaska.

No one else mentioned at the breakfast. So maybe Olson was wearing the wire.

Cowdery Indictment

Here's the indictment itself:

Cowdery-indictment source prod affiliate 7 - Upload a Document to Scribd

Read this document on Scribd: Cowdery-indictment source prod affiliate 7

From the indictment we can see the key players and the charges. I'm pulling out excerpts from the first part of the indictment and posting the whole indictment below.


The Players:

JOHN COWDERY ("COWDERY") was an elected member of the Alaska
State Senate, having been first elected to the Senate in 2000. COWDERY represented
District O, located in Anchorage, Alaska. He was reelected to the Senate in November
2004.

"COMPANY A") was a privately held company that was incorporated in a State other
than the State of Alaska. COMPANY A was a multinational corporation that provided
services to the energy, resource, and process industries and to the public sector.
COMPANY A was comprised of multiple subsidiary companies and, collectively,
COMPANY A was engaged in interstate commerce in connection with the foregoing
projects.
[This has to be VECO]

"COMPANY CEO" was the Chief Executive Officer and principal owner
of COMPANY A.
[Bill Allen]

"COMPANY VP" was the Vice President of Community and Government
Affairs of COMPANY A.
[Rick Smith]

State Senator A was an elected member of the Alaska State Senate.
[Donny Olson]

STATE SENATOR B was an elected member of the Alaska State Senate.
STATE SENATOR B resigned from the Senate in 2006.

[Dillon at An Alaskan Abroad says this is Ben Stevens. But Stevens, in my recollection, did not resign from office, he simply did not run for reelection in 2006. The Feds are usually precise with details like this.]

The Charges

Conspiracy and Bribery

As I read this, the charge is that Cowdery conspired with Bill Allen and Rick Smith to bribe Senator A (Olson) to vote in favor of the version of the PPT tax that Veco was supporting. Then the same facts are used for the bribery charge. So count one is for conspiring to bribe and count two is for actually bribing. From the indictment (p. 10)

COWDERY also told COMPANY CEO that, when he had talked to State Senator A, COWDERY said, "Well, I could probably get some money, but we gotta get a commitment that you're gonna vote for the PPT and the . . . gas contract." COWDERY told COMPANY CEO that State Senator A said "he had
no problem with that."

NOTE: Some of the peculiarity of the language of the indictment itself is due to the need to match the indictment to the law. As I recall from the earlier trials, you need various elements:
a. “an elected public official”
b. to ‘knowingly and unlawfully conspire, confederate, etc…”
c. the government entity (State of Alaska here) has to receive more than $10,000 in federal funding
d. the ‘anything of value” “to influence or reward” has to be over $5000
Also, there has to be interstate commerce, thus the explicit mention of that in the description of Company A.

Cowdery's Indictment - FBI's View, His Attorney's View, Gov. Palin's View

For people (like me) who were not paying attention, Sen. John Cowdery was indicted today. The Anchorage FBI website has the following media statement:

FOR IMMEDIATE CRM

THURSDAY, JULY 10, 2008 (202) 514-2007

WWW.USDOJ.GOV TDD (202) 514-1888

ALASKA STATE SENATOR INDICTED ON PUBLIC CORRUPTION CHARGES

WASHINGTON–John Cowdery, a current member of the Alaska state Senate, was indicted on charges arising out of a federal investigation into public corruption in the state of Alaska, Acting Assistant Attorney General Matthew Friedrich for the Criminal Division announced today.

A two-count indictment returned by a federal grand jury in Anchorage on July 9, 2008, charges Cowdery with one count of bribery and one count of conspiracy. The indictment alleges that Cowdery and his co-conspirators, including Bill J. Allen, the former chief executive officer of VECO Corporation, and Richard L. Smith, VECO’s former vice president, corruptly offered and agreed to give financial benefits to another state legislator (State Senator A) to influence and reward State Senator A in exchange for State Senator A agreeing to perform official acts as a member of the Alaska State Legislature.

The indictment specifically alleges that VECO Corporation, which at the time was a multinational oil services corporation, had a significant financial interest in contracts with oil producers in Alaska and, consequently, supported certain oil and gas legislation pending in the Alaska state legislature in 2006. The indictment further alleges that, in exchange for $25,000 – characterized as political campaign contributions – Cowdery, Allen, Smith and others sought an agreement with State Senator A that would require State Senator A to vote in favor of the oil and gas legislation favored by VECO. Cowdery and the alleged co-conspirators agreed to this plan, according to the indictment, through a series of telephone calls and in-person meetings.

If convicted, Cowdery faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison on the bribery count and a maximum penalty of five years in prison on the conspiracy count, as well as a maximum $250,000 fine for each count.

An indictment is merely an accusation and defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty at trial beyond a reasonable doubt.

To date, there have been seven criminal convictions arising out of the ongoing investigation into public corruption in the state of Alaska. Thomas T. Anderson, a former elected member of the Alaska House of Representatives, was convicted in July 2007 and sentenced to five years in prison for extortion, conspiracy, bribery and money laundering for soliciting and receiving money from an FBI confidential source in exchange for agreeing to perform official acts to further a business interest represented by the source. Peter Kott, a former Speaker of the Alaska House of Representatives, was convicted in September 2007 and sentenced to six years in prison for extortion, bribery and conspiracy. Victor H. Kohring, a former elected member of the Alaska House of Representatives, was convicted at trial in November 2007 for attempted extortion, bribery and conspiracy, and was sentenced to three and a half years in prison. Four other individuals, including Allen and Smith, have pleaded guilty to felony public corruption charges.


This case is being prosecuted by Trial Attorneys Nicholas A. Marsh and Edward P. Sullivan of the Criminal Division’s Public Integrity Section, headed by Chief William M. Welch II, and Assistant U.S. Attorneys Joseph W. Bottini and James A. Goeke from the District of Alaska. The ongoing investigation is being led by the FBI and the Internal Revenue Service-Criminal Investigation.

Senator A, according to the ADN is Democrat Donnie Olson of Nome. Like the other Department of Justice press releases, when talking about convictions, it only mentions the charges that the defendants were found guilty on, not the ones where the defendants were acquitted.


The ADN has a lot of material up on their website and Cowdery's Attorney's Statement and Governor Palin's statements come from their links. I'll look through the indictment and see what's of interest in their and perhaps post the whole thing. You can double click to enlarge the images below.




And here's the Governor's statement asking Cowdery to step down from his Senate seat.




Hmmm. Do you think the Governor had anything specific in mind when she wrote these words? Look carefully for the hidden message.

Today’s news is A Good reminder that we must continue to be vigilant In defending Alaska's sovereignty against those who would undermine it in an attempt to sell out Alaskans. As we move forward, let me remind everyone that this administration is committed to putting Alaskans and their interests first, as we develop our resources in a responsible and ethical manner.