Max Blumenthal on Sarah Palin’s Radical Right-Wing Pals and Her Ties to the Pro-Secessionist Alaskan Independence Party

As the McCain campaign continues to focus on Senator Obama’s alleged ties to former Weather Underground member William Ayers, a new investigation in Salon.com sheds light on how Governor Palin’s ties to the radical right are far deeper than previously thought. Journalists Max Blumenthal and David Neiwert detail how Palin was elected Mayor of Wasilla over a decade ago with the help of activists from the Alaska Independence Party and the John Birch Society. They allege that she tried to return the favor later by attempting to appoint one of them to an empty city council seat.

AMY GOODMAN: A new report from the Alaska legislature has concluded Republican vice-presidential nominee Governor Sarah Palin abused her power and violated state ethics law by trying to get her former brother-in-law Mike Wooten fired from the state police. The report by former Anchorage prosecutor Stephen Branchflower states, “Governor Palin knowingly permitted a situation to continue where impermissible pressure was placed on several subordinates in order to advance a personal agenda.”

Palin, on the other hand, is claiming the report completely exonerates her in the so-called “Troopergate” controversy. She told reporters Saturday, “Well, I’m very, very pleased to be cleared of any legal wrongdoing, any hint of any kind of unethical activity.”

Meanwhile, as the McCain campaign continues to focus on Senator Obama’s alleged ties to former Weather Underground member William Ayers, now a professor at the University of Illinois, a new investigation at Salon.com sheds light on how Governor Palin’s ties to the radical right are far deeper than previously thought. Journalists Max Blumenthal and David Neiwert detail how Palin was elected Mayor of Wasilla over a decade ago with the help of activists from the Alaska Independence Party and the John Birch Society. They allege she tried to return the favor later by attempting to appoint one of them to an empty city council seat.

Governor Palin is not a member of the Alaska Independence Party, but she has attended party conventions and even addressed this year’s convention.

       GOV. SARAH PALIN: I’m Governor Sarah Palin, and I am delighted to welcome you to the 2008 Alaskan Independence Party convention in the Golden Heart City, Fairbanks. Your party plays an important role in our state’s politics.

AMY GOODMAN: Max Blumenthal was in Alaska last month investigating Palin’s ties to the Alaska Independence Party. He’s a fellow at the Nation Institute. His latest article is “Meet Sarah Palin’s Radical Right-Wing Pals.” It’s online at Salon.com. He joins us now from Arizona.

We welcome you to Democracy Now!, Max Blumenthal.

MAX BLUMENTHAL: Yeah, great to be here.

AMY GOODMAN: Max, let’s just start out with the Troopergate report. I was just listening to her conversation with Alaska reporters on Saturday—Governor Palin’s—where she said she has been completely vindicated, legally as well as any other way, in terms of any pressure brought to bear on the firing of the commissioner, the public safety commissioner of Alaska. Can you summarize for us what the report found?

MAX BLUMENTHAL: Well, what the report found, everything Sarah Palin had said in terms of her motives for firing trooper Mike Wooten, who had divorced her sister, was completely false, that she felt threatened by Trooper Wooten, for example, was completely contradicted by the fact that as soon as she came into office, she demanded that her security detail be significantly reduced. And so, just across the board, everything she had said about Trooper Wooten being a threat to her was contradicted by this report, and that Todd Palin, the self-described “first dude” of Alaska, spent 50 percent of his personal time, you know, in the governor’s office seeking ways to fire Trooper Wooten and to fire Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan, who happens to be sort of a local hero in Alaska.

So, the report itself is pretty devastating, and what Sarah Palin is saying is that she hasn’t—that the report finds that she hasn’t broken any laws. And technically, while that’s true, she also stands to be censured by the legislature and/or fined, which would completely erode her image as a reformer who’s above party politics and personal corruption, something that, you know, the McCain campaign had sought her out for.

Beyond that, there’s more trouble ahead for Sarah Palin. She had followed a terrible McCain campaign strategy—and this is a little bit complicated—by which she would file an ethics report against herself before the State Personnel Board. And the logic behind this was that because the governor controls the State Personnel Board, you know, reports directly to the governor, she could get a favorable report on her handling of the trooper controversy, and this would have a lot of public relations value and would sort of at least exonerate her before the public. But what wound up happening was the State Personnel Board appointed another tough prosecutor, someone named Timothy Petumenos, an Anchorage—an Anchorage lawyer, who also happens to be a Democrat. And they’re going to release their report in a few weeks, and I expect that this report could be equally, if not more, devastating for Governor Palin.

AMY GOODMAN: And is that report expected to be released before the election, before November 4th?

MAX BLUMENTHAL: Yeah, I think it is.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Max Blumenthal, let’s talk about your piece, “Meet Sarah Palin’s Radical Right-Wing Pals.” You’re just recently back from Alaska. What did you find?

MAX BLUMENTHAL: Well, I took a trip to Alaska about two weeks ago and interviewed the former chair of the Alaskan Independence Party. And then a reporter named David Neiwert, who’s been covering the anti-government militia movement since the early ’90s, took his own trip there, and in addition to interviewing, you know, the former AIP chair, Mark Chryson, we talked to people who served on the city council in Wasilla with Sarah Palin; we talked to her predecessor as mayor, John Stein; and we combed through city council records, investigating the extent of her ties to the Alaskan Independence Party, because we didn’t think that this has been sufficiently covered.

And what we found was that she was more closely associated with this party and with fringe right-wing elements than the media had previously discovered or than Palin was willing to acknowledge. And not only did she, you know, associate with them in order to advance her political ambitions, she advanced their agenda on a local and state level. Beginning with Mark Chryson and a character named Steve Stoll, who’s known around Wasilla as “Black Helicopter Steve,” because he’s rumored to have buried several high-powered automatic weapons in his front yard in expectation of the federal government ushering in the new world order, these characters are very paranoid, conspiratorial people who loathe the federal government and believe that the federal government is responsible for all the ills that have befallen their state. That’s why they—you know, that the Alaskan Independence Party was founded. It was founded to find a means, some remedy, so that Alaska could secede from the union. Its founder, Joe Vogler, said, “I’m an Alaskan, I’m not an American. And I hate America and all her damned institutions.” So this is what the party is about.

And these characters were—you know, befriended Sarah Palin in the early ’90s, when she first started her political career. Mark Chryson sort of claimed partial credit for her conversion from sort of middle-of-the-road bipartisanship to hardcore conservative ideology. And he worked hand-in-glove with Sarah Palin when she was in the city council on reducing property taxes and legislation like that. At the same time, they encouraged her to run for mayor against John Stein. And the mayor in Wasilla was at the time considered a nonpartisan position, but she ran an extremely partisan campaign with the help of her church, the Wasilla Assembly of God. And, by the way, I have an exclusive video report about her church at a website called thedailybeast.com. And while her church put out fliers calling her the Christian candidate, which sort of subtly, in a subtle way, may have suggested that John Stein, whose name is Jewish but was actually a Lutheran, was a Jew, Mark Chryson and Black Helicopter Steve Stoll created a lot of the negative backscatter around the campaign, for example, demanding that John Stein produce a marriage certificate proving that he and his wife were legally married. They claimed that they were not actually married, which is a devastating charge in a culturally conservative environment like Wasilla. This eventually led to Sarah Palin’s election.

So, as soon as Sarah Palin was elected, what did she do? She wanted to reward her supporters, for example, Black Helicopter Steve. So the city council seat she had just vacated, she nominated Steve Stoll for this seat. His nomination was blocked by a city councilmember named Nick Carney, who we interviewed, and Nick Carney told us he blocked the nomination because Steve Stoll was a violent influence on a local level. And John Stein told us this is the kind of character who, if you had a disagreement with him, he’d take you out in the parking lot and try to beat you up. And these are the people Sarah Palin was working with. Beyond that, they claim that they always had an open door into her office as mayor, and that continued as governor.

And they worked with her, and she supported them on efforts to, for example, amend the state constitution’s language to make it impossible for municipalities to enact their own gun control laws. And the reason that the Alaskan Independence Party wanted to do this was to make it easier to form anti-government militias. This is a party that’s been intimately connected to the militia movement on a national level, including figures like Bo Gritz. So, Sarah Palin knew the views of these groups. That’s according to Mark Chryson. She knew his views, but she was willing to work with them to advance her ambition. And she was willing to enact their agenda. So it didn’t matter whether or not she was a member of this group; she was at least a member in spirit.

AMY GOODMAN: Max Blumenthal, we’re going to go to break. When we come back, we’re going to hear a clip of the interview you did with the former chair of the Alaska Independence Party, Mark Chryson, and we’ll also play the piece that you did on her church. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, the War and Peace Report. Back in a minute.