From the Huff Post:
"Pallin' Around with Terrorists": Palin's Link to Militia Leader Charged With Conspiracy to Commit Murder
According to
sworn testimony
Thursday during federal court proceedings in Alaska, two close
associates of former Governor Sarah Palin -- Joe Miller, a staunch
political ally of Palin's whom she supported in his failed bid for the
U.S. Senate; and Palin's former director of boards and commissions Frank
Bailey, more commonly known in Alaska as Palin's "hatchet man" -- were
responsible for introducing FBI Informant William "Drop Zone" Fulton to
Schaeffer Cox, the leader of the so-called Alaska Peacekeeper Militia.
Cox and two other Fairbanks-based militiamen have been
charged
with conspiring to kidnap and murder Alaska judges and law enforcement
authorities. They have also been charged with violating various federal
weapons laws for owning or attempting to purchase machine guns,
silencers, hand grenades and other combat-type weapons.
It's an only-in-Alaska
story.
The surreptitious meeting between Fulton, Cox and Palin's associates
took place a scant six months before Palin was selected by John McCain
to serve as his running mate on the GOP ticket. Cox, a supporter of
Palin's, was then a Republican candidate for the Alaska House of
Representatives, District 7. He finished with 36 percent of the votes.
Cox's trial, now in its third week, has revealed the
bizarre cultural and political milieu in which Palin came to power in Alaska and which eventually catapulted her to a national stage.
The introduction of Fulton to Cox took place in a suite at the
Captain Cook hotel in Anchorage during the 2008 Alaska Republican
Convention, at which Palin and her minions were trying to
execute a political
coup d'état against Palin's longtime Republican Party nemesis, Randy Ruedrich.
The convention -- and Palin's
sub rosa role in it -- was to
become a catalyst for both swelling anti-Palin sentiment in Alaska (well
prior to her vice-presidential selection) and for Anchorage-based
activist Andree McLeod to launch her own good-government crusade against
Palin.
Palin's feud with GOP kingpin Ruedrich was longstanding and
well-known
throughout Alaska prior to the convention. What wasn't known until now
is that Palin's forces at the convention were working in concert with
some of Alaska's fringe elements, including Fulton, who testified last
week that he, Miller and Bailey had met with Cox to discuss political
"strategy" in Anchorage.
McLeod, a former
close ally of Palin's
who had helped her to launch her statewide political career, was an
eye-witness to many of the machinations of Miller, Bailey, Fulton and
Palin's longtime gopher, Ivy Frye, at the convention. She said it all
had the feel of a "paramilitary operation," replete with Walkie-Talkies
and a "strange paranoia."
"I felt like I traveled to the Twilight Zone," McLeod declared.
"Having previously attended GOP conventions and meetings, it was surreal
to initially observe Fulton's menacing conduct, and then to watch the
scenes unfold as if they came straight out of a movie script." Indeed,
McLeod was so curious about Fulton's behavior in particular that she
queried him about his activities. "He told me that he was providing
'security,'" McLeod recalls. At one point she witnessed Fulton and three
other of his associates surround Miller while exiting an elevator "and
they marched off in military formation."
McLeod, who also was in direct conversation with Frye at various
points throughout the afternoon, contends that Bailey and Frye were in
constant contact with Palin via cell phone throughout the convention.
"That's when I knew that Sarah wasn't looking out for what was best for
Alaska," McLeod asserted. "She was only looking out for what was best
for her." McLeod also witnessed Miller and Frye leave the convention
together and depart -- again, under Fulton's paramilitary protection --
in a white SUV. "It was all really strange," she said. "It was like
Black-Ops."
The troubling nature of the Fulton-Miller-Bailey activities convinced
McLeod that Palin had conspired with members of her administration to
oust Ruedrich, all while working on government time. She filed her first
Freedom of Information Act request against Palin and her administration
as a result of her suspicions.
While McLeod wasn't able to identify any emails related to the
alleged convention conspiracy (Bailey had by then orchestrated a secret,
extra-governmental email system that circumvented Alaska's open
government laws) there were two significant outcomes that would
eventually lead to Palin's political downfall: 1) McLeod says she
discovered emails indicating that Palin and Bailey had violated state
personnel protocols in the hiring of a state surveyor. As a result,
McLeod filed the first of several
Ethics Act complaints
against Palin's administration; Bailey eventually was required to
undergo "ethics training" because of the "troubling nature" of his
emails; and 2) McLeod's resulting cache of some 20,000 Palin emails
proved to be a goldmine for national reporters during the 2008
presidential election seeking substantive background information on
Palin.
Bailey makes no mention of this extraordinary meeting with Cox and Fulton in his
not-so-tell-all book,
Blind Allegiance. Nor does he address his, Miller's and Frye's efforts to oust Ruedrich at the convention. It's yet another Bailey cover-up.
In fact, Palin had longtime ties to the right-wing, anti-government fringes of Alaska politics. Despite her
duplicities
to the contrary, Palin's husband, Todd, had on three separate occasions
registered as a member of the Alaska Independence Party, which called,
at the time, for the secession of Alaska from the Union. Palin also
produced a
glowing video on behalf of the AIP welcoming them to Fairbanks for their statewide convention earlier that year.
In 2009, for my book,
The Lies of Sarah Palin: The Untold Story Behind her Relentless Quest for Power,
I interviewed Mark Chryson, chairman of the AIP from 1995 to 2002, who
talked about the various ways his movement supported Palin during her
tenure as mayor of Wasilla (he claims Palin attended the AIP convention
in 1994.) One former militia member I interviewed in Talkeetna with
direct links to Cox said that the Palins -- "especially Todd" -- were
"sympathetic to our cause." That Palin and her minions would associate
with Cox -- and seek out his counsel for political "strategy" at a time
when she was being considered as a potential vice-presidential nominee
-- is further reflection not only of her fringe political views but also
of her warped political judgment.
If former Senate candidate Joe Miller is
one step to the right of Atilla the Hun, Schaeffer Cox is somewhere out
in the ozone. In addition to being a gun rights advocate, he has also run afoul of the law for domestic violence. In 2010, according to the
Fairbanks Miner,
"Cox pleaded guilty to reckless endangerment and is sentenced to two
years probation for allegedly punching and choking his wife during a car
ride to visit his mother-in-law in Anchorage." Less than two weeks
later he was charged with "fifth-degree weapons misconduct" for carrying
a concealed handgun. Cox also believes that the Alaska judicial system
is a "for profit private corporation"; some of Cox's supporters held a
trial at a Denny's restaurant in which he was "exonerated" of all
charges.
Fulton's bio is equally bizarre. In October of 2010, Miller hired
Fulton and two of his Drop Zone Security employees to provide security
for a campaign forum at a public school. At the event, Fulton and his
associates
handcuffed and detained Tony Hopfinger of the
Alaska Dispatch
for alleged trespassing charges -- this while Fulton was acting as an
FBI informant. When Fulton suddenly disappeared last year, there was
widespread speculation
that he may have been murdered. In March of last year, his attorney,
Wayne Anthony Ross, a Palin loyalist whom she nominated for Attorney
General (he became the first such nominee ever
rejected by the Alaska Legislature) announced that Fulton had signed over his two homes to him.
Miller's relationships with
Fulton,
Cox and, of course,
Palin have been well documented. His campaign manager Randy Desoto recently praised Palin in a
blog
on Miller's web site following her appearance at the Conservative
Political Action Conference in Washington, at which Palin delivered the
keynote address. Many think that Miller
will run against Mark Begich for the U.S. Senate in 2014 and will once again seek Palin's support.
This sordid cast of characters reflects the roots of Palin's support
in the Last Frontier -- support, as my friend Phil Munger at
Progressive Alaska
notes, that has now played out its course. McLeod also says the
surreptitious activities involving Cox, Fulton, Miller, Bailey and other
Palin cronies at the Captain Cook in March of 2008 reflect another side
of Palin as well. "It was a coward's way out," McLeod says of Palin's
decision to stay away from the convention while others acted in her
stead. "She doesn't have the guts to confront people face-to-face. She
uses surrogates. It was another cowardly move on her part."
