“Dan Fleckenstein and I rented the apartment,” he says. “We shared it with all our friends. We were like the first guys to have their own apartment. We had lots of parties. Todd visited frequently and even Sarah once or twice during the holidays.”
After dinner he takes out an old photo album and starts to flip through it: standard-issue stuff of guys in their early twenties acting silly, often with alcohol involved. What you might see on MySpace or Facebook today.
He turns to a new page. I get a quick glimpse of unclothed bodies. “Oops!” he says. “I didn’t think these were still in there. Sorry, there are a few I can’t let you see.”
“Which ones are those, Dad?” asks J.C. and Brenda’s son, Chase, who is eighteen and has just graduated from high school.
“Never mind,” J.C. says, clearly embarrassed. “Why don’t we talk about something else?”
So we talk about how J.C. gradually grew disaffected with Todd and Sarah. He didn’t like her Assembly of God–driven, right-wing political agenda, and he didn’t like who she was becoming personally as she grew more consumed by ambition. He also lost respect for Todd for selling out his own values in the service of Sarah’s career. “I was surprised he wanted to be a player in politics,” J.C. says, “but I guess that power trip can be seductive.”
An open rupture occurred in 2007 when Sarah fired her legislative director, John Bitney, another close friend of J.C.’s from the Wasilla High class of ’82.
Bitney had separated from his wife and was dating Debbie Richter, the estranged wife of Scott Richter, a building contractor who was Todd’s best friend at the time. Richter had built a cabin for the Palins on twenty acres of land they owned on Safari Lake, about twenty-five miles northwest of Talkeetna and accessible only by floatplane or snow machine. The structure was so inordinately lavish for its rustic surroundings that it was commonly referred to as the Todd Mahal.
John Bitney served as de facto manager of Sarah’s gubernatorial campaign; Debbie Richter was treasurer. After Sarah won, Debbie became head of the Permanent Fund Dividend Division at the State Department of Revenue, which each year sends a check for thousands of dollars to every man, woman, and child in Alaska as a reward simply for living in the state. Sarah named Bitney her legislative director.
But postelection, Scott Richter complained to Todd about Bitney’s ongoing relationship with his soon-to-be ex-wife. “By now Todd was the king,” J.C. tells me, “so he had to do something.” He promised Richter that he’d have Sarah fire Bitney. And she did, in the most graceless and humiliating way possible, waiting until he was out of the office, then turning off his state BlackBerry and shutting down his state e-mail account, leaving him unable to communicate with the governor’s office. Neither Todd nor Sarah ever spoke directly to Bitney about his dismissal.
The Palins didn’t stop there. When Speaker of the House John Harris hired Bitney for his staff, both Todd and Sarah pressured him to rescind the appointment. Harris stood firm, Bitney married Debbie, life went on. The lasting casualty was J.C.’s friendship with Todd.
In Going Rogue, Sarah shows how vicious she could be toward a lifelong friend with whom she’d fallen out. She writes that as she and her staff prepared her first budget for presentation to the legislature, Bitney “would wander in and out, plop down in the chair at the end of the table, nibble cookies, and absently thumb his BlackBerry.” She accused him of playing video games when he should have been working.
Later in the book, she describes Bitney “slouching against the wall,” and writes, “The fact that his shirt was buttoned one button off and his shirttail was poking through his open fly didn’t exactly inspire confidence.”
And then one more twist of the knife: “Later we learned the legislative director had been too busy with his personal affairs to attend to much state business.”
“The way they treated Bitney was obscene,” J.C. says. “And Todd was behind it; he was the moving force. He wanted to punish Bitney for having an affair with Debbie Richter. Not because Todd doesn’t approve of affairs—let’s not even get into his private life—but because Bitney had the gall to have an affair with the wife of one of Todd’s buddies. It was purely personal, it was vindictive, and it was a betrayal of a thirty-year friendship. I have no use for either Todd or Sarah anymore and, unlike a lot of people you’re going to run into, I’m not afraid to say that on the record. I don’t know how anyone can walk around Wasilla afraid to say what they think of Todd and Sarah. Life’s too short to live it in fear of schoolyard bullies like them.”
J.C. invites us back for a boat ride around the lake.
THE MORNING AFTER dinner at the McCavits’, I read that a Wasilla soldier, Jeremy Morlock, has been charged with murder in the deaths of three Afghan civilians. This must come as a terrible shock to my neighbors. Jeremy and Track were hockey-playing friends throughout high school, and Palin ties to the Morlock family go back years.
Acquaintances I’ve made in Wasilla explain the connections. Jeremy’s mother, Audrey, played high school basketball with Sarah. Even before that, in Dillingham, Todd was close to Audrey’s twin sister, April. A generation later, not only did Track and Jeremy play hockey together, but Jeremy’s sister, also named April, became—and remains—one of Bristol’s best friends, even joining her in Los Angeles when Bristol competed on Dancing with the Stars. In addition, Jeremy’s older brother, Alex, was coached by former Palin in-law Mike Wooten when he played Pop Warner football in Wasilla.
Jeremy first got in trouble with the law at age fifteen, when he was charged with “leaving the scene of an accident involving an injury or death.” He received a deferred prosecution. He was known in high school for his violent temper. A former hockey coach recounted one incident to the Anchorage Daily News. “Booted off the ice for bad behavior … Morlock went into a locker room and assaulted a younger player. Morlock punched, squeezed the player’s jugular and slammed the younger boy’s body against the wall, narrowly missing a coat hook,” the newspaper reported. Morlock’s assault on the younger boy was so violent that Wasilla police were called to the scene.
Morlock graduated from high school in 2006 and enlisted in the army soon afterward. While in the army, he got married. In 2008, when he was twenty, his wife sought a domestic violence protective order against him. The Anchorage Daily News reported that he “was charged … with fourth-degree assault for allegedly throwing a beer glass at his wife and pressing a lighted cigarette against her chest.” A year later he was again charged with assault.
During the winter of 2010, Audrey Morlock moved out of her home on Joes Drive in Meadow Lakes, just west of Wasilla. Fifteen-year-old Willow Palin and two dozen friends got together at the vacant house for a vodka-fueled party that degenerated into vandalism that caused at least $20,000 worth of damage. The incident was reported by the National Enquirer. In the end, only the boys involved were charged with vandalism. The girls were cited as witnesses. Many in Wasilla believe that it was only Sarah’s intervention that spared Willow from criminal charges.
The vandalism seems inconsequential compared with Jeremy Morlock’s alleged crimes. The army charged him with murdering the three civilians earlier this year. He is one of a group of five soldiers accused of killing civilians for sport and keeping body parts as souvenirs. He was brought back from Afghanistan in custody on June 3 and is currently confined at an army base in Washington State, awaiting court-martial.
Bristol’s friend April, Jeremy’s sister, is quick to spring to his defense, writing on Facebook: “Please please everyone pray for my brothers release … Love you Jeremy Morlock I am so proud of you no matter how much shit ppl want to talk … You were doing your fucked up job that our country tells you …”
In March 2011, Morlock pleaded guilty to charges that he’d murdered three Afghan civilians. In return for his agreement to testify against other soldiers in future legal proceedings, he was sentenced to only twenty-four years in prison. He’ll be eligible for parole in 2018.
/> Obviously, military service doesn’t always solve the problems of a troubled teenager. But it seems to have helped Sarah’s son Track, whose behavior during his high school years paralleled in many ways that of his friend Jeremy Morlock.
Like Morlock, Track was known for his violent temper, often displayed during hockey games. Palin friend Curt Menard told the New York Times in 2008 that if you wanted to watch Track play you had to be present at the start of the game. “Track has a temper,” Menard said. “Get there late and he’d already be out.”
The degree to which “hockey mom” Sarah involved herself in Track’s playing career is a matter of debate. The New York Times reported in 2008 that she “would drive to rinks at all hours, children in tow. She sometimes ran the scoreboard, let hockey players from other cities sleep on the floor of her home and got involved in the management of her eldest son’s teams.”
I don’t find anyone in Wasilla who confirms this. Instead, I’m told that Track’s biggest problem with regard to hockey was getting to the rink. “Track was always finding his own way,” a team parent tells me. Others recall that it was not Sarah, but state trooper Mike Wooten, when he was married to Sarah’s sister Molly, who would most often drop off and pick up Track. “I almost never saw Sarah at a game,” another parent says. When Sarah did attend, spectators recall that she cheered loudest not for goals, but on those occasions when Track knocked an opposing player down and hit him repeatedly with his stick.
His temper was a problem off the ice, too. “He’s always been out of control,” an old family friend tells me. “He ran over Sarah. He’d shout, ‘Fuck you, don’t tell me what to do!’ and she’d be like, ‘Okay.’ Then she’d run to Todd and say, ‘He’s your son: do something!’ Todd and Track never had a relationship. Zero. I remember being at their house when Track was sixteen. Whatever it was that had happened, Todd said, ‘No, you’re not going out. You’re grounded. Go to your room.’ And Track said, ‘Fuck you,’ and walked out the door.”
Like Jeremy, Track apparently had problems with alcohol and drugs during his high school years. “At least monthly,” a parent of one of Track’s classmates tells me, “Todd and Sarah would be called to the school because of disciplinary problems with Track.” The National Enquirer reported in 2008 that in high school Track was addicted to Oxycontin, quoting a friend of his as saying, “I’ve partied with him for years. I’ve seen him snort cocaine, snort and smoke Oxycontin, drink booze and smoke weed.”
In late November 2005, four Valley teenagers were arrested by state police and charged with vandalizing forty-four school buses: cutting brake lines, deflating tires, breaking mirrors, and unplugging the buses from their engine block heaters to prevent them from starting in cold weather. Because one of the vandals was only sixteen, troopers did not release his name, but word spread immediately in Wasilla that the sixteen-year-old, who was also charged with stealing a bottle of vodka from a liquor store, was Track Palin. An Anchorage radio station and an Anchorage television station identified Track by name in 2008, even before the National Enquirer published a story that claimed he was one of the vandals. On September 10, 2008, however, the New York Daily News quoted one of those charged, Deryck Harris, as saying that Track did not participate.
Whether or not Track was involved in the school bus vandalism, his problems were apparently so serious that in November of 2006, his senior year at Wasilla High, Sarah and Todd withdrew him from school and sent him to live with friends in Portage, Michigan. He returned to Wasilla in the spring of 2007, but did not graduate from high school. He enlisted in the army on September 11, 2007.
“Track was in pretty big trouble,” a friend of his tells me. “The school bus thing, theft issues, drugs, multiple stuff. Sarah was governor by then, and Track posed too much risk in terms of PR. So she and Todd sat him down and told him he was going to enlist. They said, ‘You’re gonna do this. You’re gonna do this because you owe us. This is gonna look good for us and you’re gonna do it.’ ”
Sarah made it look even better by arranging the enlistment for September 11, the seventh anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. On September 11, 2008, Track was deployed to Iraq, allowing Sarah to proclaim forever after that she was the proud mother of a combat vet. Some might see this as a classic example of taking the lemon that life gives you and using it to make lemonade.
I talk to the state trooper who drove Sarah and Track to the enlistment office in Anchorage on September 11, 2007. “There was quite a bit of emotion in the back seat of that car,” he tells me, “but patriotism was not one of the emotions.”
There is no evidence that Track actually saw combat during his year-long deployment to Iraq, but his presence in a war zone made him a political asset to his mother. Unlike his friend Jeremy Morlock, Track completed his military service without incident.
His army outprocessing order, issued on January 6, 2010, said, “You are released from active duty not by reason of physical disability.” But reports of Track’s drug use persisted even into the summer of 2010.
A family friend says Track, like the other Palin children, has suffered from being made to perform as a member of Sarah’s entourage. “Sarah’s always used those kids as part of this fake image, this illusion she tries to keep up about actually being a decent mother,” the friend tells me. “Those kids never had any parenting, they had to raise each other. And look how it’s turned out.”
How the Palin children are turning out would be of interest only to the Palin family, except for Sarah’s decision to make them an integral part of her public persona. Sarah wraps herself in her children as ostentatiously as she wraps herself in the arms of Jesus and in the American flag. She uses them shamelessly, from Track in his uniform to Trig in his diapers. But it’s all just part of the show.
DILLINGHAM, WHERE Todd grew up, is more than three hundred miles from Anchorage, has a year-round population of scarcely three thousand, and can be reached only by air or sea. As in so many small, isolated Alaskan towns, drug use and alcohol abuse are epidemic, and when an attractive white woman moves in, she is noticed.
I talked to an attractive white woman who lived in Dillingham in the mid-1990s and who found herself an auxiliary member of “the crew”: a group of young Native men that included Todd’s younger brother, J.D. Because he returned to Dillingham each summer to direct his family’s commercial fishing operation, Todd remained an active member of “the crew.” It did not take long for the attractive white woman to catch his eye.
“Todd hit on me,” she told me in the summer of 2010.
“During summer, the fishing season, Todd was out there, and they’d all flirt with me. I’d probably flirt back. I remember coming out of a restaurant one day and Todd was in his old Ford truck with a boat hooked up to the back, and he was like, ‘Come here.’ I had on these overalls with a bikini top, and he said, ‘I hear lots about you.’ Then he said, ‘Turn around,’ and I said, ‘What?’ and he said, ‘I hear you got a great heart-shaped ass’ and ‘Aren’t you just adorable?’ Todd was hot back in the day, and I remember thinking, ‘Hmmm.’ Then I found out he was married. I was like, ‘Well, I don’t roll that way.’
“J.D. had one of those big Native steams behind his house and he always invited the white girls. A bunch of us would go over. One day Todd made a comment about my nipples being pink. I said, ‘You’ve never seen me naked,’ and he said, ‘Well, maybe there’s a peephole.’ Todd and his friends had been peepin’ on us for months. And he wasn’t some horny teenager; he was a grown and married man.”
IT’S TIME for Nancy to leave. She’s had a pleasant stay on Lake Lucille. She reconnected with old friends from the 1970s and connected with many of the new ones I’ve made since I first returned in November 2008. We visit Tom Kluberton and his companion, Hobbs, at Fireweed Station in Talkeetna, and have dinner at the home of Dewey and Gini King-Taylor. Dewey’s truck has not been vandalized again.
We have coffee with Verne Ruprigh
t in his mayor’s office. Catherine Taylor stops by to visit. One night the McCavits, and Shannyn Moore and her partner, Kelly Walters; and Jeanne Devon, who writes The Mudflats, a blog about Alaskan politics, and her husband, Ron, come for dinner.
The lunacy that erupted when I moved in has diminished to the level of nuisance. Some meathead puts up a fake Twitter page with my name on it. My lawyer acts promptly to have it removed. A Los Angeles Times blogger repeats the canard that “From his deck, McGinniss … can peer into the bedroom of Palin’s 9-year-old daughter, Piper.” After how many lazy repetitions does a false statement cease to be false? On this one point I agree with Sarah: you can’t trust what you read in the mainstream media.
(illustration credit 7.1)
Nancy has joined me in not peering over the fence.
After a farewell dinner with Tom and Marnie Brennan, Nancy flies out of Anchorage airport on the evening of Saturday, June 12. Her departure is lower key than the one we made jointly in September of 1976.
EIGHT
SARAH LEARNED a lesson from her near recall so soon after her election as mayor in 1996: there were limits to the power even of one who believed herself to be on a mission from God. She could get away with firing a popular police chief, but firing the librarian had been a step too far. She could clear the way for more big-box stores to move into Wasilla, but she could not move the museum, which had been deemed a National Historic Landmark. She could keep the bars open until 5:00 AM, but she couldn’t keep books she disliked out of the library.
On March 27, 1997, Sarah hired a new chief of police: Duwayne “Charlie” Fannon, who had been chief in the southeast Alaska town of Haines for the past eleven years. Before that, Fannon worked for the sheriff’s department in Canyon County, Idaho. He said that as far as he was concerned, the 5:00 AM closing hour for bars was sacrosanct. In Haines, the bars closed at 5:00 AM and opened again three hours later. “I have a philosophy that every time there’s a new law or new ordinance we lose a little more of our freedom,” he told the city council. “I don’t think the answer to crime is restricting people’s freedom more and more.” He was confirmed by a 5–0 vote, with Nick Carney abstaining.