The Mudflats

It was quite the Who’s Who of media yesterday, both traditional and new media. Reporters and bloggers sat side by side in the packed courtroom waiting for the sentencing of Bill Allen, the former CEO of the oil services company Veco. The ringleader of Alaska’s corruption scandal drama, with players known as “The Corrupt Bastards Club,” Allen has been busy dishing the dirt on the rest of the corrupt bastards to lighten his own sentence.

Two of those that fell before him, Rep. Vic Kohring (R) and Rep. Pete Kott (R) opted for a different strategy. They fought it every step of the way, refused to cooperate, maintained their innocence in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary and ended up paying for it.

But Bill Allen sang. He sang like a canary! He sang like Pavarotti! And he did it to save his butt, and keep his children from going to jail right along with him, where they deserved to be. He cooperated with the FBI, lost his long-time friendship with former U.S. Senator Ted Stevens, testified on three occasions, submitted himself to 71 interviews, consented to have conversations audio taped and allowed a CCTV camera to be installed in his home. And his song reverberated throughout the land. And the corrupt bastards fell like the corrupt bastards they are.

And so today, Judge John Sedwick sat on the bench and decided his fate. But first, he had to listen to all the reasons why he should go light on Allen, and apparently there were a lot of them, at least if you listen to his lawyers. Even the government lawyer agreed that Allen’s sentence needed to be reduced from the 78-97 months that he would have been facing if he’d adopted the failed “middle finger strategy” of Kott and Kohring.

So how do you defend a guy who handed out cash to state legislators to further his own agenda and line the pockets of the oil companies? A bombastic, drunken, lout with entitlement issues the size of Alaska? And all this doesn’t touch on Allen’s sexual proclivities, which ranged from prostitutes to underage girls, including one particular case in which the girl, Bambi Tyree, a 14-15 year old child, when Allen would have been in his 50s. How do you defend this guy? Here’s how.

It started off with Allen’s attorney Bob Bundy, talking about how Allen was known to be a generous person, so these bad bad legislators knew right who to go to for the money. His generosity and kind heartedness made him a…..”sitting duck.” Really. Those were his exact words. “When they came to him he responded,” the attorney tried to convince the judge. You see, it was because Bill Allen really believed that the petroleum profits tax that would benefit the oil companies was the best thing for Alaska that he did it. It was his love of this great state and the people in it that led to his downfall. He was vulnerable…he was weak. How could this good and noble man resist? His passion for the best interest of all people led to his downfall. The illegal activity only happened because of solicitation, you see. It was those others. They ASKED. What could he do, being so generous and selfless and all? Him with that big heart of gold. They played him like a fiddle. And, he explained, there was “no organization of the illegal activity.” Allen would never do that. And cash changing hands was “serendipitous as it occurred,” he explained. Serendipitous, indeed.

At this point, the people in my row were looking at each other incredulously. As soon as the words “sitting duck” came out of the attorney’s mouth, there was a rapid-fire clacking on the keyboards of the laptops in the room. It was kind of fun to listen to the level of sound from the keyboards. You always knew when something really quotable was being said by the increase in the tap tap tapping. Kind of like when the shutters of cameras go crazy.

Fortunately Judge Sedwick piped up at this point. It was the only time I saw him look irritated, and justly so. He basically said, “You expect me to believe THAT?” but in longer and more eloquent sounding words. He sided with the prosecution saying that it was obvious that Allen had taken a leadership role in all this. It was not because of his generous nature that Allen bribed the legislators, it was because he wanted to provide “hundreds of millions, if not billions to his clients.”

As you probably know, cameras are not allowed in the courtroom, so here is my incredibly professional and accurate artist’s rendering of that dramatic “sitting duck” moment.

“When you can say to someone, ‘I own your hind-quarters’ that implies a leadership role,” said prosecutor James Trusty referring to Allen’s famous audiotaped quote to Pete Kott in which the very same Bill Allen informs the legislator “I own your ass!” That was “reflective of the role he had of orchestrating payments, and promises across the board,” said Trusty.

Ah, yes… the corrupt CEO with the heart of gold. Not.

Then came still more testimony from Allen’s other attorney about how the court needs to have “balance and proportionality” in weighing the good he has done in his life vs. the bad, and how “he is 72, going on 73″ (as opposed to?) and how prison time will be difficult for him, and he has personal characteristics like being hard-working, dedicated and goal-oriented, and how he loves his “nookular” family, and how he has even engaged in acts of “disinterested generosity.” When he became so focused on the pipeline, he “allowed himself to turn generosity into an effort to increase his influence.”

Here’s the part where I really started to dislike this guy. He went on about how “pursuing legislative goals” is protected by the first amendment, and people who do this are engaged in “good citizenship.” He may have crossed the line, but he wasn’t the worst. If he had been the worst, the FBI would have been making deals with other people to bring him down, not making deals with him. We must beware of “runaway opinion,” he warned, and then proceeded to remind the judge that he shouldn’t let public opinion sway his decision making and that he needed to “strike a balance that recognizes that he has suffered so much already.” He was able to justify his corruption by thinking he was doing something good for the state.

I was in the back of the courthouse, which is good because I was staring at the back of that guy’s head so hard that if I’d have been in closer range, I’m sure I would have set his hair on fire. He was definitely not winning friends in the courtroom.

And this defense was startlingly similar to Assemblyman Dan Coffey’s defense of his friend Joseph Boehm, whose name came out when the aforementioned Bambi Tyree pleaded guilty in a “drugs for sex with underage girls” scandal that came to a head in 2003.  It was during her testimony in this case that she told of her association with Bill Allen.   Coffey pleaded for leniencey for Boehm in a letter to the court where he said:

“Look at those who are now blaming Joe for all the bad things that happened to them,” he told the judge in the letter. “If you do, I doubt you will find that any of them have made any contributions to our community. Joe has. He built a company which employs hundreds. These people who now point fingers at Joe, have never built anything. They are vultures who saw Joe’s addiction as a way to get to his wealth and they were all over him with their drugs and the other inducements.”

If it weren’t for all those other people who took advantage of these poor vulnerable  guys, they would have been just fine. (dabbing eyes with a hanky)  But, all that offering of underage sex and illegal drugs and pipeline votes and legislative favors… it just wasn’t fair.

Then Bill Allen took the stand himself and talked a long time. Most of it had nothing to do with anything, but was a biography of his life and times in Alaska, and how there used to be a balance in town when he owned the now defunct Anchorage Times. The Daily News published what “they” thought and the Times published what “conservative people think.” Then he went right on with a critique of our former governor. “I think Murkowski done a good job.” Yes, he talks like that.

More biography – He did wrong. But he quit drinking. He did a lot of drinking down in Juneau and that’s the stupidest thing you can do because it clouds your judgment. He apologized to the judge and to the people of Alaska. He thought he was helping them “but instead of helping, I pushed them down.” He went over the line. But, he’s worked with the government for 2 years, and “we probably done 5 to 7 days a week to get ready for the trials.” He harmed people who were his friends who are not now. (Ted Stevens presumably) And finally he left us with these words, “Try to remember that I done some good.”

All during this time, a cluster of media-types were sitting in the back corner. All of a sudden I felt a nudge from Dennis Zaki who was sitting next to me. He handed me his little pad that said “How long?” at the top and then a list of names of those who were sitting close by. I filled out “36″ and passed it to Shannyn Moore who was sitting on my left. The pad made the rounds.

And now, the time had come. Judge Sedwick reviewed everything and decided on three 3-year sentences for the three convictions, and that they could be served concurrently. That meant 36 months. I won the bet! I wondered what would have happened had I stood up and yelled “YESSSSS!” with a fist in the air. And he also levied the maximum fine – $250,000 for each offense for a total of $750,000. Unfortunately, this is a drop in the bucket for our friend Mr. Allen, but the point was made.

We followed him out to a waiting limo – one of three that were there to pick up family members. I had a camera malfunction of some kind and only managed to get a couple not very good shots. Private security guards blocked the way for Allen, and a very funny photographer told me that he anticipated that Allen would be doing a peanut commercial shortly, because he looked like he was also doing it with protection. Levi shouldn’t have all the fun.

~Dennis Zaki is on it, filming the Allen family after the trial.

Here is his video of the event.

Mark Allen (Kentucky Derby winner – Mine That Bird), and his daughter bribed multiple politicians including former senator Ted Stevens, his son Ben, and Congressman Don Young. Allen’s cooperation kept them from being prosecuted for crimes.