Gatsby
Joined: 09 Feb 2007
|
 Posted: Sun Sep 21, 2008 8:01 pm Post subject: Showdown on the Last Frontier |
 |
|
It's sad seeing Sen. Stevens fall to this. He once was considered a good and caring person, and a first-rate senator. He has gotten old and has poor judgment.
On the other hand, no one in Alaska would make the case that Bill Allen was ever a good and caring person. Most people would say, behind his back, he was always a ruthless crook. He set out to buy the Alaska Legislature (at the behest of the oil industry), and he succeeded. It appears he also bought himself a Senator. Bill Allen ruined a lot of people's lives and prostituted a fine, old newspaper. Life in jail would be too good for him.
| Quote: |
September 22, 2008
In Alaska Senator�s Trial, Story of Oil and Politics
By NEIL A. LEWIS
WASHINGTON � Ted Stevens and Bill Allen, who will soon confront each other in a federal courtroom here, were once friends of sorts, thrown together at Alaska�s busy intersection of politics and oil money.
For decades, each man played a different but essential role in the story of the state�s transformation from a remote frontier into an economic bonanza.
Mr. Stevens, 84, the longtime Republican senator from Alaska, is a decorated World War II aviator, a graduate of Harvard Law School and a former federal prosecutor. He goes on trial Monday on felony charges that he knowingly failed to disclose some $250,000 worth of gifts and services from Mr. Allen.
Mr. Allen, 71, who will be the prosecution�s main witness, is a rough-hewn man who grew up as an itinerant fruit picker and dropped out of high school when he was 15 to enter the energy industry as a welder. After working on some of the state�s earliest offshore oil platforms, he eventually made millions of dollars as a freewheeling contractor for oil companies on the North Slope.
While Mr. Stevens has earned a reputation as a gruff and cantankerous legislative player, Mr. Allen�s world in Alaska was far cruder than the relatively genteel ways of Washington.
Mr. Allen has already pleaded guilty to bribery and conspiracy charges and testified at two trials of Alaska state legislators about his determined efforts to bribe lawmakers. The trials portrayed a raucous, frontier atmosphere in Juneau, the state capital, where Mr. Allen and his lobbyists set themselves up in a liquor-stocked hotel suite and summoned legislators to direct their votes on oil issues.
In the indictment of one lawmaker, Pete Kott, the government said that Mr. Allen had told him in crass language that he owned him.
At one trial, Mr. Allen was asked about law enforcement reports that he had considered killing his nephew over an attempt to blackmail him over his alleged gifts to Mr. Stevens. Mr. Allen denied that he had planned to kill his nephew, saying that while he was angry, �I wouldn�t have done that because his mother is my sister.� |
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/22/washington/22stevens.html?ref=politics&pagewanted=all
| Quote: |
A Dual Fight for Stevens
Senator's Trial Begins Monday as He Campaigns to Keep Seat
By Del Quentin Wilber and Paul Kane
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, September 21, 2008; A04
Embattled Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska goes on trial tomorrow in a historic public corruption case, bucking conventional legal wisdom in the hope of winning acquittal in time to be reelected to a seventh full term.
The first sitting senator to face a federal trial in more than two decades, Stevens, an 84-year-old Republican icon of both the Senate and his home state, was indicted eight weeks ago on charges that he failed to disclose lavish gifts he received from executives of an oil services company. If convicted, Stevens could face prison time, his 40-year Senate career would meet an ignominious end, and Republicans would probably lose a normally reliable Senate seat.
While battling prosecutors in what is expected to be a month-long trial, Stevens also will be running an uphill reelection campaign from the same Washington courthouse -- 3,500 miles from Anchorage. He may have to debate his Democratic opponent well after midnight by teleconference and make arduous red-eye flights to attend weekend campaign events.
It's a risky strategy but perhaps the only one that could result in his reelection, analysts say.
"We have an Alaska Senate race that's about to be decided by 12 residents of the District of Columbia," said Jennifer Duffy, a senior editor of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. "If he's acquitted, he goes home, and it becomes more of a victory lap than a campaign."
Prosecutors have said their case is simple. In a 28-page indictment and other court filings, the Justice Department's Public Integrity Section alleges that Stevens repeatedly lied on Senate financial disclosure forms about gifts and $250,000 in home renovations he received from executives of the now-defunct oil services company Veco. |
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/09/20/ST2008092001995.html
I couldn't find a picture of Sen. Stevens' home, but did find these pictures of Girdwood.
http://flickr.com/photos/teeping/272361822/
http://flickr.com/photos/peedeelong/2785322125/
http://flickr.com/photos/23573205@N05/2362582422/sizes/l/
http://flickr.com/photos/sh0rty/105383069/ |
|
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Usergroups
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
