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Cuomo cracks down on Power Authority
by Rick Karlin

In a stepping up of Andrew Cuomo’s investigation of possible political interference by some past and present members of the NY State Police, the AG has issued a stern letter to the state Power Authority whose inspector general, retired State Police Colonel Daniel Wiese, is on paid administrative leave from his $179,000 job.

According to Cuomo’s letter, a subpoenaed search of Power Authority emails found that emails on Wiese’s Blackberry had been erased on April 1 — the very day Cuomo’s investigation was first reported in the media.

Additionally, Cuomo noted that someone at the Power Authority appears to have deleted past emails on Wiese’s computer.

Now, Cuomo is asking NYPA who at the agency may have erased the tapes and he’s looking for the backups they may have. Specifically, the AG wants emails relating to Wiese, Lori DiMichelle, a NYPA travel coordinator who is also, I’m told, a close friend of Wiese’s and Albert Swanson, a deputy inspector general at the agency who is also a Wiese ally.

Wiese has long been a controversial figure, with close ties to former Governors George Pataki and Eliot Spitzer. He’s emerged as a central figure in Cuomo’s probe of a possible network or loosely affiliated group of State Police officials who may have been keeping tabs on or engaging in nefarious smear campaigns against lawmakers who crossed the governor’s office.

Wiese, for example, may be called to testify in a lawsuit against the son of former Congressman John Sweeney, with Capital Region lawyer E. Stewart Jones accusing Wiese of orchestrating the arrest of Sweeney’s son, who was arrested in a violent brawl four years ago. Jones believes the arrest was just one attempt to smear the former Congressman who lost his 2006 re-election bid days after a leak from the State Police that his wife had called 911, saying he was beating her.

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Claim of rogue police disturbs New Yorkers
Former state gov’t officials deny investigative hit squad existed
BY MICHAEL GORMLEY The Associated Press

    ALBANY — The allegation is startling and the pattern it’s based on unsettling: A rogue element in the state police has for years tailed and snitched on elected officials and political enemies.
    Tabloid headlines like “State Police Smear Squad,” led by the New York Post citing anonymous sources, have rattled a New York state government already torn by an unprecedented year of scandal. The claims prompted Gov. David Paterson last month, just two weeks into his administration, to call on Attorney General Andrew Cuomo to investigate the state police.
    The accusations stoke longtime suspicions and conspiracy theories that connect — accurately or not — isolated acts, associations, even family connections in the administrations of Republican Gov. George Pataki and Democratic Gov. Eliot Spitzer. The Cuomo probe is the latest to hit New York’s capitol, already gripped by scandal and investigation, including a state body investigating all the investigations.
    “There was obviously an element in the police force and it wasn’t Republican or Democrat, it was just out of control people who had power that were clearly monitoring a lot of the elected officials,” Paterson said in a radio interview a week ago. He said his own extraordinary admission of past marital affairs a day after his March 17 inauguration was prompted in part by fear of the alleged state police squad.
    When confronted by news reporters, he backed off the personal assertion and said more than 10 lawmakers statewide, from both parties, told him state police were watching them, stopping them for traffic infractions, even releasing a tip on a speeding ticket to a blog before the lawmaker got home.
    Cuomo, a Democrat with his eye on the governor’s office, immediately turned up the heat publicly. He called in a veteran prosecutor who was part of the New York City Police Department corruption case in the 1970s, detailed in the Al Pacino movie “Serpico.”
    But those who were deep inside the Pataki and Spitzer administrations discount the tales of such a shadow operation, even in the other’s administration . They say it’s an old yarn given life in an increasingly partisan Capitol in a legislative election year where screaming headlines of scandal trump those about the impending recession and $20 billion of state budget deficits forecast for the next three years.
    But these former aides also hedge their bets.
    “I never saw evidence of any kind of a rogue unit in the state police,” said one former high ranking member of the Spitzer administration. “No one ever said, ‘We have secret information.’ ”
    But the former official added: “I never say ‘never’ anymore because of all the bizarre things that happened.”
    Two former Pataki administration officials also denied any knowledge of a rogue unit.
    “I have no reason to think it happened,” said one of the former officials. He then added: “I have no proof to say it didn’t.”
    “No one was playing those kinds of games,” said another former Pataki hand.
    The former administration offi - cials spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter that, if true, could violate civil rights laws.
    “I think it’s probably overstated and less sinister than it sounds,” said Democratic Sen. Eric Schneiderman of New York City. Schneiderman, like most in Albany, is quick to defend the state police, operating in a difficult spot in a power structure in which they serve the governor.
    Old Albany hands say such accusations also dogged state police in the Democratic administrations of Mario Cuomo, Hugh Carey and even Franklin Roosevelt.
    Those in charge of the state police during the Pataki and Spitzer administrations flatly deny troopers are used as political pawns.
    “It is critically important that the state police be seen as apolitical due to their enormous power to arrest and investigate,” former state police Superintendent Thomas Constantine told Cuomo’s investigators.
    At the center of the accusations
is Daniel Wiese.
    He is regarded as an accomplished and respected state police officer, fiercely loyal to the governors he worked for and a bit of a hothead.
    In the 1980s, Wiese managed to earn the respect and friendship of a young prosecutor in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office who liked to join covert ops. The lawyer, Eliot Spitzer, came to believe Wiese put his life on the line for him during an investigation of the Gambino crime family. When Spitzer became governor in 2007, Wiese called him on a direct line.
    At about the same time he met Spitzer, Wiese was a young trooper making friends with a local mayor. Wiese would become part of George Pataki’s so-called Peekskill mafia of confidants who surrounded the governor when he took office in 1995.
    Through the two administrations, Wiese was often there when politics mixed with police.
    In March 1996, Wiese yanked the state police protection of Lt. Gov. Betsy McCaughey-Ross, who at the time was on the outs with her boss. State police said she abused the unit, treating them more like chauffeurs.
    Soon after, Wiese invoked the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination during testimony to a federal grand jury investigating the Pataki administration, according to reports by The Village Voice newspaper. The grand jury was probing allegations that a Pataki fundraiser offered to help Korean-American families get parole for relatives in return for campaign donations. Wiese, Pataki and his aides were never indicted.
    The New York Times reported that Wiese tried to monitor the investigation, insisting on updated information from New York City detectives and demanding that one of his men join the team until federal investigators took over and froze state police out.
    In the 2002 election, when Spitzer was running for re-election as attorney general and Pataki was running for a third term as governor, Wiese acted as intermediary, carrying Spitzer’s complaint about a nasty jab by his Pataki-picked Republican opponent, according to a high-level Pataki official. Then, in 2003, lawmakers contested Pataki’s appointment of Wiese as inspector general of the state Power Authority. A day after Wiese retired from the state police, he took the $160,000-a-year job at the Authority, whose board was appointed by Pataki. A special waiver allowed Wiese to also collect a state police pension of about $60,000.
    In March of this year, a week after Spitzer resigned after being implicated in a prostitution investigation, Albany County District Attorney P. David Soares issued a second report into claims that top Spitzer aides concocted a plot to embarrass Senate Republican leader Joseph Bruno using state police records to track his use of state aircraft.
    Again, Wiese was there.
    The March 28 report quoted testimony by former Spitzer Communications Director Darren Dopp saying that Spitzer had arranged for Wiese to talk to a New York Times reporter to “confirm that [state police] had long held concerns about Mr. Bruno’s use of the aircraft” dating to the Pataki administration. The story countered Bruno’s insistence that Spitzer started it.
    On April 5, Wiese was put on paid leave pending Cuomo’s investigation.
    Last week, Wiese’s pay was stopped during his suspension after Cuomo told reporters he believes e-mails were erased.
    Wiese’s lawyer, Kevin Kitson of White Plains, didn’t respond to repeated requests for comment.
    Schneiderman, the Democratic senator and former prosecutor, said the Cuomo inquiry could serve to clarify the long-standing concern over whether state police overstepped their bounds from public protection to political aggression.
    “You are up against a very, very dangerous line,” he said.     

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They say it’s an old yarn given life in an increasingly partisan Capitol in a legislative election year where screaming headlines of scandal trump those about the impending recession and $20 billion of state budget deficits forecast for the next three years.

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THE TROOPER PLOT THICKENS

May 17, 2008 -- Albany's dirty-tricks scandal seemed serious but straightforward at the outset: The Spitzer administration deployed state troopers and a credulous local newspaper reporter to put a hit on a political enemy.
But right after Post State Editor Fredric U. Dicker broke the story in July, things began to get complicated.

Attorney General Andrew Cuomo stepped in - and the administration went into full cover-up mode.

Then-Gov. Eliot Spitzer, implicated in a prostitution scandal, resigned in March - and his successor, David Paterson, asked Cuomo to probe reports of a "rogue" State Police unit that engaged in political espionage.

Whereupon it was revealed that e-mails and, perhaps, other evidence allegedly had been scrubbed from the BlackBerry and computer of a key figure in the probe - retired State Police Col. Daniel Wiese.

And then came news that another retired trooper, Gary Berwick, had killed himself - his suicide note suggesting at least partly out of concern over a pending appearance before Cuomo's investigators. (Spitzer's hooker woes apparently concerned him as well.)

Berwick once headed then-Gov. George Pataki's security detail (as did Wiese) and was close to retired State Police Superintendent Preston Felton - who was fired out of hand by Paterson immediately upon taking office.

Berwick's note, Dicker reports today, indicated an obsession with the ongoing Cuomo probe - but contained no admissions of any wrongdoing.

That there was wrongdoing has long been obvious - perjury and obstruction of justice, at least, and perhaps crimes of a much more serious nature.

How serious?

Serious enough, perhaps, to drive a man to suicide?

Cuomo's full-fledged, no-holds-barred, authorized-by-the-governor investigation is well under way.

We wish him the best of luck.

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CAPITOL
Ex-trooper denies ‘rogue unit’ claims
BY MICHAEL GORMLEY The Associated Press

    The former trooper at the center of allegations that a rogue unit in the state police was acting on political interests of past governors is declaring his innocence and exploring a lawsuit against the state authority that suspended him.
    Two people close to Daniel Wiese, a former head of the security detail under governors George Pataki and Eliot Spitzer, says Wiese is speaking with an employment lawyer about action he could take against the New York Power Authority. The authority suspended him without pay pending the investigation begun in April, said the two people close to Wiese. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because no legal action had been filed.
    New York Power Authority spokeswoman Christine Pritchard declined comment.
    On Monday, Wiese, the authority’s inspector general, lost his attempt to quash a subpoena for his records, including electronic communications. The subpoena was from Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, who has headed an investigation into the state police since April 1.
    “I am not aware of the existence of the alleged ‘rogue element’ in the state police currently under investigation,” Wiese stated in an e-mail to the state Power Authority provided through a third associate of Wiese. “I have no knowledge of such an ‘element.’ Furthermore, I do not believe that any such unit or element ever existed within the state police any time during my association with the organization.”
    Wiese denies Cuomo’s assertion that his e-mails were erased on April 1, when the investigation was announced in the New York Post. He acknowledges the e-mail was purged but said it was a routine operation after his BlackBerry malfunctioned. He named two Power Authority officials to back up his claim, saying he was told after several weeks of his complaints that they had to reboot the device, which would erase data.
    But Wiese also said his e-mails and other data were already saved as part of an unrelated civil lawsuit involving another employee. E-mails and other data of other workers at the authority were also saved, he said.
    Pritchard wouldn’t comment on those claims Wednesday.
    In Monday’s e-mail, Wiese quoted an Associated Press report in which Pataki also denied any rogue unit or any political misconduct or dirty tricks perpetrated through the state police.

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CAPITOL
Panel charges Spitzer aides Ethics commission also cites lack of cooperation
BY MICHAEL GORMLEY The Associated Press

    The state Public Integrity Commission on Thursday charged four former state officials — but not former Gov. Eliot Spitzer — with misusing state police to discredit the governor’s political foe, the first charges to come out of the year-old scandal that paralyzed state government.
    The commission found insufficient evidence to charge anyone else but harshly criticized Spitzer and his administration for a lack of cooperation in the investigation despite public promises to cooperate fully. The Spitzer administration claimed executive privilege and sought to withhold 109 documents “without legitimate basis,” according to the panel’s report released Thursday.
    The report also complained that the executive chamber created “numerous improper obstacles” to the investigation by withholding documents and gradually releasing information over 10 months.
    The Spitzer administration’s “spurious claims of privilege unnecessarily and improperly delayed the commission’s investigation,” a lack of cooperation that was “flatly at odds with its duty to assist the commission’s investigation and the promises of Governor Spitzer that the administration was cooperating fully,” the report said.
    By not charging Spitzer, the commission drew sharp criticism from former Lobbying Commission Chair David Grandeau, whose panel was replaced by the Public Integrity Commission.
    “The whitewash is continuing,” Grandeau said Thursday. “It’s been a year of making sure Eliot doesn’t get blamed.”
    A spokeswoman for Spitzer said the report “makes clear there is no evidence that he violated the Public Officers Law.
    “Indeed the report confirms what Governor Spitzer has said throughout: that he understood the information to be public and accordingly its release was proper and obligatory. He is saddened by the toll this investigation has taken on public servants who were simply trying to do their jobs,” Brandy Bergman said in a written statement.
    Spitzer resigned March 17 after he was identifi ed in a federal prostitution investigation.
    The commission found former Spitzer aides Darren Dopp, Richard Baum and William Howard and former state police head Preston Felton conspired to smear then-Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno by releasing his travel records to a reporter. At issue were trips by Bruno in May and June to New York City on days he met with lobby- ists and attended Republican fundraisers.
    If found to have violated the code of ethics in Public Officers Law, Dopp could face a $10,000 fine. He has since left state government.
    Felton, who was acting state police superintendent, faces two ethics violations that could each carry a $10,000 fine. Now retired, he was accused of working with Dopp to compile, and in some cases recreate, records of Bruno’s travel on state aircraft operated by state police. Dopp was Spitzer’s communications director.
    The state police records access officer testified that travel itineraries of a state official were usually withheld on the theory that releasing them could endanger the life or safety of the official.
    Baum, Spitzer’s secretary, and Howard, a top public security aide, settled their cases by accepting charges that carry no penalty. Both have left state government.
    “I will contest the charges because I do not believe I did anything wrong in releasing public records at the request of the media and at the specific direction of the governor,” Dopp said in a prepared statement. “I can and will refute the commission’s claims and look forward to doing so in the appropriate forum.”
    Howard declined comment on the report. Felton had no published telephone number and couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.
    “This settlement allows Rich to avoid lengthy and expensive legal proceedings and move on to a new chapter in his life … the commission concluded that Rich did not respond to e-mails or ask enough questions of subordinates,” Baum’s attorney, Steven Reich, said in a written statement.
    The commission said evidence shows Baum, who was Dopp’s boss, was aware of efforts to get information about Bruno’s travel. However, the commission report adds: “Baum received [and ignored] e-mail communications” that showed there was a plot to generate negative publicity about Bruno to Spitzer’s benefit, even though the governor’s aides had already concluded Bruno wasn’t violating state policy on the use of state aircraft.
    Dopp and Felton could request a public hearing to contest the findings. If more evidence comes out of those hearings, more charges could be brought, including against Spitzer, the commission said.
    The commission, created as part of Spitzer’s early government reforms, found Dopp and Felton used the state police to serve Spitzer’s and their own interests in a way that compromised the agency.
    Felton must have “believed, or should have known,” that the documents state police collected on Bruno would be provided to the media, according to the report.
    “Such misconduct erodes public confidence in the integrity and independence of the state police,” stated the commission, the majority of which were appointed by Spitzer.

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Testimony: Release of travel records angered ex-state police head
August 5, 2008
The Associated Press

ALBANY — More than 8,500 pages of interviews, e-mails and documents released today include the angry testimony of the former state police superintendent who compiled specific travel records on Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s chief political enemy but said he never intended the records to become public.
The testimony of former Acting Superintendent Preston Felton, made a year ago behind closed doors to the Albany County prosecutor, shows the state police veteran was angry the records he provided at the request of top Spitzer aides were released to a newspaper. The records showed exactly where then-Senate Republican Majority Leader Joseph Bruno was traveling in New York City when he used state aircraft.
Felton, who now faces an ethics charge for his role in the scandal that paralyzed New York’s government for a year, testified that William Howard, a key Spitzer public safety aide, ordered him in 2007 to create the synopsis of Bruno’s travels. The details went beyond what state police in previous administrations would release publicly about a politician’s travels, Felton said. Those details are usually kept quiet as a security precaution.
“I will say this to you, when they brought to my attention that those materials were in the newspaper, they had to scrape me off the roof because that’s not why, you know, those were given to him (Howard) and it was made plain and clear to him that that’s not why they were given to him,” Felton said. “My recollection is it wasn’t a pleasant situation.”
Felton faces an ethics charge by the state Public Integrity Commission that could result in a $10,000 fine for his role in the scandal. Now retired, Felton has refused to comment publicly.
“We’re kind of stuck in the middle of this thing,” Felton testified a year ago. “You know, provide transportation, don’t provide transportation. They, you know, stick us in the middle, and we shouldn’t be in the middle, basically.”
The Public Integrity Commission, in its report issued July 24 of this year, accused Felton of “knowingly and intentionally” violating ethics law for compiling travel data “that he believed would be provided to the media by the executive chamber.”
Felton said Howard was his boss and that he, as head of the state police, worked for Spitzer.
“We’re part of the executive department, we have to live with that,” Felton testified in the August 2007 interview with Albany County District Attorney P. David Soares. “They changed a lot of things from the old way of doing business. We had to live with that. You know, it’s just a fact of life.”
Spitzer Communications Director Darren Dopp turned the state police records over to a newspaper reporter who wrote a July 2007 article that was critical of Bruno and, Spitzer aides said internally, might expose Bruno to greater attention by the FBI that was already investigating him. The records were released under the state Freedom of Information Law, often referred to as FOIL.
“What I made clear was this is not a FOILable document,” Felton testified.
Howard accepted a lesser ethics charge by the Public Integrity Commission that carries no penalty. Dopp also faces a possible $10,000 fine by the Public Integrity Commission if the ethics charge against him is proven. Dopp has told Soares that Spitzer played a larger role in the release of records in the scandal than he and his lawyers have acknowledged.
The Public Integrity Commission also picked up a copy of the Soares documents Tuesday.
In other records released Tuesday, a top Spitzer aide said the governor approved the decision to have aides submit written statements instead of personally testifying in the attorney general’s initial investigation into the dirty tricks scandal that followed the newspaper article.
Spitzer’s approval came even as the governor was saying publicly that he and his administration would fully cooperate with the probe.
The records also show some statements provided by the governor’s office were handled in a way that they ended up being “perjury proof” and that two top aides at the center of the travel scandal differed in their recollection.
The testimony taken by Soares shows that Spitzer’s counsel, David Nocenti, didn’t require two other top aides — Dopp or Secretary to the Governor Richard Baum — to swear they were telling the truth. Testimony stated that Nocenti was inexperienced in taking sworn statements and made a mistake by not requiring the aides to raise their right hand and swear they were telling the truth.
Dopp later testified to Soares that the statements provided through Nocenti didn’t accurately depict his role in the political plot that bogged down Spitzer’s administration and state government for a year. Dopp has maintained he was a scapegoat in the smear campaign against Bruno and that Spitzer was deeply involved.
The DA’s report did not conclude if the statements by Dopp and Baum were intentionally made perjury-proof. In his testimony, Nocenti “emphatically denied” he intentionally orchestrated the aides’ statements in such a way that Dopp and Baum couldn’t face perjury charges.
The records released Tuesday show Policy Director Peter Pope testified that Spitzer approved the decision to submit sworn statements instead of personal testimony during Attorney General Andrew Cuomo’s investigation into the travel scandal, the first of many probes into what became known as Troopergate.
The testimony is part of 8,562 pages of documents and testimony released Tuesday in the probe of the plot to discredit Bruno, Spitzer’s chief political foe.
After first concluding there was no plot, Soares later issued a report in which Dopp accused the governor of ordering the release of the travel records.
There was no immediate comment Tuesday from Spitzer’s spokeswoman. He resigned March 17 after he was named in a federal prostitution investigation.