Fear and Loathing in Wasilla.

I have mentioned before that there are more and more people who have expressed a desire to tell me stories. No not fairy tales, or campfire stories, but rather behind the scenes stories from Sarah Palin's brief yet intriguing time as our governor.

Sometimes these stories are disquieting, sometimes they are humorous, and sometimes they are downright shocking. They come from people who once worked for her, lived in Wasilla with her, or had some other contact with her either before, after, or during her tenure as Alaska's first female governor.

Here let me give an example of some of what I have been privy to recently.

My standard agreement with people who are willing to share information with me, after I have established that the information is reliable, is that I will NEVER out them on this blog or elsewhere. So let me describe these sources only as "very close to the governor's inner circle" and leave it at that.

From these sources I have learned some absolutely crazy details about Palin's term as governor. One of these is closely related to my previous post about Sarah's disdain for her security detail.

Now I need to preface this by stating that one of the things many of Alaska's ex-governor's miss the most when they leave office is the convenience of having somebody available to drive them to their appointments on time, help them to bypass security at the airport, and make sure that everything is ready for their arrival at their destinations.

If you have lived in Alaska. or a place with a similar climate, you know how absolutely bone chillingly cold it is to climb into a car that has sat outside in in below freezing temperatures, and then sit in it for ten to fifteen minutes, shaking like a Parkinson's patient, while the car slowly begins to warm up enough to drive.

Well an Alaskan governor does not have to do that. They can have a scheduled pick up time, where a toasty warm car arrives at their front door with a hot beverage of their choice inside waiting for them, and all they have to do is sit back and enjoy the ride to their office. Who in their right mind would turn down a perk like that?

Do you want to guess or should I just tell you?

Did you guess Sarah Palin? Well considering whose blog you are on I certainly hope so!

When Sarah Palin was sworn in as our governor she had six state troopers assigned to her security detail.

Two of them were also pilots whose job it was to fly the jet that Governor Frank Murkowski had purchased. Well Palin got rid of that, so those two members of her security staff were reassigned. And that left four.

Apparently one of these troopers was taken off of the detail because, and this is a quote, "the Palin children did not like him." From what I understand he was a very professional man who did not engage in small talk, something that the troopers are instructed NOT to do, and that made the kids uncomfortable. So he was dismissed, and no replacement was requested, so now we have three.

Another trooper was assigned to Juneau for the brief time Palin lived in the the Governor's mansion. When the governor relocated to Anchorage, his services were no longer required, and now we are left with two.

Now as I explained in an earlier post Sarah did not want a security detail to drive, or follow her around Wasilla. But what I did not realize at that time is that she refused to allow anybody to drive her around Anchorage as well!

Now this may seem like a small thing, except that Sarah really was a small town girl and she was not that familiar with the "big city" of Anchorage. Oh sure she knew where J.C Penney's and Costco were but the rest of the city? Not so much.

Apparently on more than one occasion her poor neglected security staff would arrive at a venue ahead of the governor, pick out a parking place for her, and wait patiently for her arrival. Only to see her sail right on past blissfully unaware that she had just missed her destination. You would think just the embarrassment of always showing up late, or having everybody know you were lost, would shame you into allowing your staff to drive you around. But not our Sarah.

So I know the question that you must want to ask at this point, "why in the hell would she NOT allow these trained professionals do their job?" Don't worry, even though you were not there to ask for yourself, I did it for you. And here is the response, also a direct quote.

"I don't think she wanted anybody to know what she was doing." Which kind of makes me wonder, "What the hell was she doing?"

Well I don't know. As a matter of fact, there were LOTS of people who did not know.

Another little tidbit I picked up was that her schedule was always empty. You see the governor has their schedule posted so that their staff can have access to see when they are free. Apparently Sarah was ALWAYS free. Well at least according to her schedule.

So kind of tongue in cheek I asked, "Well surely she at least had lunch scheduled."

"No she didn't. It was completely empty."

I have heard similar complaints from other sources who worked with the Governor. NOBODY seemed to know what she doing, or when she was doing it.

Do you remember when Levi said this in Vanity Fair? "When Sarah would get home from her office--almost never later than five and sometimes as early as noon--she usually walked in the door, said hello, and then disappeared into her bedroom."

Well that selfsame story was told to me by a source who claimed that Sarah "would roll into work around ten o'clock and be out of the office by three p.m. every day." What did she DO while in that office? Good question.

Now to be fair, and it is a struggle at this point to be fair, there is always the possibility that Palin was doing the "people's business" every single day, and that she kept that information carefully guarded from the prying eyes of her....staff. It seems the only person who knew what Palin was doing, and when, was her office manager Kris Perry. And that information, which was always readily available in previous administrations, was only shared with those who could get through to the office manager on the phone to ask. And that was something that was not always easy to do.

I also learned that Palin did not like to be questioned and refused to accept advice from anybody except her closest confidants and her husband. Sarah was defensive, secretive, and often seemed paranoid.

Glenn Beck said this about Palin after she appeared on his show. "Her shields were so high" and went on to add that she did not trust people. I think many of us assume that Palin learned to be defensive and suspicious after entering politics, but I think she has always been very secretive, and has NEVER really trusted those outside her tight little group of friends and family.

So when we wonder HOW Palin could keep a scandalous secret from being discovered, we need to realize that she may have been doing that very thing all of her life.

The question is "What are the secrets she is protecting now?"