Other Responses To The Dismissal of Public Safety Commissioner Walter Monegan
On July 17, Palin said publicly that "We have start recruiting. We have to start doing more than just talking about it. And taking action also." Monegan responded on July 18 that the two most recent trooper graduating classes had the most recruits in years. On July 18, Monegan suggested that his dismissal might have been related to his reluctance to fire Wooten. He said phone calls and questions from the Palin administration and the governor's husband, Todd Palin, about Wooten started shortly after Monegan was hired and continued until May or June 2008. Monegan said that Palin's acting chief of staff, Mike Nizich, told him on July 11 that he was being removed from his position because Palin wanted to take the Department of Public Safety in a different direction.
On July 18, in response to Monegan's comments, Palin released a statement:
| “ | I do not interfere with the day-to-day operations of any department. Former Commissioner Monegan was not released due to any actions or inaction related to personnel issues in his department. We had hoped the former commissioner would have stayed in state service to help fight alcohol-related crime. We offered him the position of executive director of the Alcoholic Beverage Control board and, unfortunately, he turned it down. | ” |
The statement also denied that the governor had improperly accessed Wooten's employment records, saying that "o allege that I, or any member of my family, requested, received or released confidential personnel information on an Alaska State Trooper, or directed disciplinary action be taken against any employee of the Department of Public Safety, is, quite simply, outrageous. Any information regarding personnel records came from the trooper himself." Palin said "absolutely no pressure ever put on Commissioner Monegan to hire or fire anybody, at any time … no pressure was ever put on anybody to fire anybody." She also praised Monegan's replacement, saying "Commissioner Kopp shares my vision for filling vacant positions and reducing crime across the state."
In late July, former U.S. Attorney Wevley Shea, who had acted previously as an informal adviser to Palin, wrote her an unsolicited letter in which he urged her to apologize for "overreaching or perceived overreaching" to get Wooten fired, and warned that the matter could snowball into a bigger scandal. The letter said that she should fire any aides who had raised concerns with Monegan.
On August 13, Palin said specifically that her action was unrelated to Wooten. She said that Monegan was dismissed for not adequately filling state trooper vacancies and fighting alcohol abuse problems, and because he "did not turn out to be a team player on budgeting issues." Palin acknowledged that "pressure could have been perceived to exist, although I have only now become aware of it." She suspended Frank Bailey, and apologized to Alaskans:
| “ | Mr. Bailey was aware of my family’s personal concerns about Trooper Wooten. It appears that he, though, tried to apply some pressure on my behalf and this was without ever discussing it with me and I apologize to Alaskans for this distraction. | ” |
On August 28, in an interview with Anchorage Daily News, Monegan said, "For the record, no one ever said fire Wooten. Not the governor. Not Todd. Not any of the other staff. What they said directly was more along the lines of 'This isn't a person that we would want to be representing our state troopers.' " He later added that he had resisted pressure from the Governor and her husband to re-open the case against Wooten.
In an August interview with The New Yorker, Palin blamed Monegan for failing to address alcohol abuse in rural Alaska. According to the New Yorker article, Palin stated that she didn't fire Monegan, but rather "asked him to drop everything else and single-mindedly take on the state’s drinking problem, as the director of the Alcoholic Beverage Control Board." Palin characterized the job offered to Monegan as "commensurate in salary pretty much—ten thousand dollars less," but said that Monegan didn't want it, so he quit.
In September, in a televised interview with Charles Gibson of ABC News, Palin reiterated her position that she had dismissed Monegan because of his job performance and that neither she nor her husband pressured him to fire Wooten. Palin said "I never pressured him to hire or fire anybody … I know that Todd, too, never pressured … Monegan." In response, Monegan said: "She's not telling the truth when she told ABC neither she nor her husband pressured me to fire Trooper Wooten. And she's not telling the truth to the media about her reasons for firing me."
Monegan has made a number of other statements alleging that he had been pressured to fire Wooten. "There was pressure for that, yes." "There were numerous contacts by the governor, her husband, by her staff that basically said that Trooper Wooten was not an acceptable example of an Alaska state trooper." "The fact that they tried for better than a year while I was there is kind of indicative that somebody was trying to pressure something."
On September 2, 2008, "a senior strategist in the McCain campaign" said "the man who was fired has said on the record that he was never pressured by the governor or the governor’s husband on the issue of firing Trooper Wooten."
On September 15, 2008, McCain/Palin campaign spokeswoman Meg Stapleton held a news conference at which she accused Monegan of "egregious insubordination," "obstructionist conduct" and a "brazen refusal" to follow proper channels for requesting money. Asked why someone with a history of insubordination would be offered the leadership of the Alaska Alcoholic Beverage Control Board, Stapleton said that without having to deal with a budget, Monegan would be able to focus on alcohol abuse issues. She added that Palin "respects the fact that he was respected in the community."
Monegan's successor, Charles Kopp, testified that during the July 9, 2008, phone call seeing if he was still interested the Commissioner's job, he asked why Monegan was leaving, and Frank Bailey told him that Governor Palin was upset by the episode where she was asked to autograph Wooten's photograph.
Read more about this topic: Alaska Public Safety Commissioner Dismissal
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