Can He Stop 'Troopergate'?A McCain lawyer scrambles to block a Palin ethics inquiry.
By Michael Isikoff | Newsweek Web Exclusive
Sep 16, 2008 | Updated: 7:15 p.m. ET Sep 16, 2008
A former top Justice Department prosecutor now working for John McCain's presidential campaign has been helping to direct an aggressive legal strategy aimed at shutting down a pre-election ethics investigation into Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.
The growing role of Edward O'Callaghan, who until six weeks ago served as co-chief of the terrorism and national security unit of the U.S. attorney's office in New York, illustrates just how seriously the McCain campaign is taking the so-called "troopergate" inquiry into Palin's firing last summer of Walt Monegan, Alaska's Public Safety Commissioner.
O'Callaghan emerged publicly for the first time this week when he told reporters at a McCain campaign press conference, in Anchorage, that Palin is "unlikely to cooperate" with an Alaskan legislative inquiry into Monegan's firing because it had been "tainted" by politics. That new stand appeared to directly contradict a previous vow, expressed by her official gubernatorial spokesman on July 28, that Palin "will fully cooperate" with an investigation into the matter.
But O'Callaghan (who resigned from the U.S. attorney's office at the end of July to join the McCain campaign) is doing more than just public relations when it comes to "troopergate." He told NEWSWEEK that he and another McCain campaign lawyer (whom he declined to identify) are serving as legal "consultants" to Thomas Van Flein, the Anchorage lawyer who at state expense is representing Palin and her office in the inquiry. "We are advising Thomas Van Flein on this matter to the extent that it impacts on the national campaign," he said. "I'm helping out on legal strategy."
All this may seem far afield from O'Callaghan's recent work, which included among other matters, directing the Justice Department's sprawling investigation into abuses in the United Nations oil for food program for Iraq. But ever since last month, when he landed in Alaska as part of a McCain "rapid response" team dispatched from campaign headquarters in Arlington, Va., O'Callaghan has been helping to direct a hardball legal strategy aimed at thwarting inquiries into the Alaska governor on all fronts.
In that capacity, O'Callaghan, working with Van Flein, devised a plan that involved shifting the investigation away from the Alaska Legislative Council--a bipartisan panel that had authorized the probe in a unanimous vote on July 28--and into the hands of the Alaska Personnel Board, a body that is ultimately answerable to Palin herself.
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