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| Drop Zone employee, Sally Heath (Sarah Palin's mom), and Bill Fulton |
In September of 2010 Bill Fulton was perhaps the single most misunderstood man in Alaska.
Vilified as a "Jack booted thug" after he handcuffed Alaska Dispatch reporter Tony Hopfinger, and forced to watch news report after news report flay him to the bone mercilessly, Fulton wanted nothing more than to call them up and explain that he was one of the good guys. In fact he was AT THAT TIME working for the FBI and helping them to build their case against Schaeffer Cox. (And possibly a few others.)
However Fulton was unable to tell anybody his side of the story, because he was undercover with the Feds, and they kind of frown on that sort of thing.
Then later in 2011 after Schaeffer Cox was arrested, Fulton was directed to disappear, which he did. And again the speculation started about why he disappeared? Was he the Alaska militia's weapons supplier? Was he himself part of Schaeffer's militia group? Or even whether or not he had been assassinated to keep him quiet.
During this time, now newly relocated out of state, Fulton scanned the internet reading about the investigation and the opinions of various news agencies and blogs, hoping that somebody would put two and two together and realize that HE was the FBI informant and not one of Schaeffer's lackeys.
And one day
somebody did:
So Cox traveled to Anchorage to make the purchases with this "person" who they believed could hook them up with grenades, silencers, and automatic weapons? Now isn't that interesting?
Isn't Drop Zone in Anchorage? I do believe that it is.
And isn't the owner of Drop Zone, William Fulton, the guy Joe Miller hired as "security" to rough up a local journalist?
And isn't William Fulton referred to as the "supply sergeant" because he is the go-to guy for militia members seeking weapons and supplies?
And isn't Fulton currently MIA?
This may seem a like an obvious conclusion, but until this post NOBODY had been willing to voice it out loud.
So finally Fulton had some hope that people would start to realize that he was NOT a jack booted thug roughing up reporters at Joe Miller's request and selling weapons to militia members determined to overthrow the government. But that instead he was a patriot doing a very difficult, and very dangerous, job.
And now Fulton felt that he had somebody he could each out to. He wasn't exactly supposed to, but something about that arrogant liberal blogger, who always seemed to be keeping people's secrets for them, seemed like a person he could trust. And so he did.
Now I receive a lot of unsolicited e-mails, many of them are not exactly on the up an up.
For instance I have been contacted by George Soros. (Only not really.) Sarah Palin. (Nope.) Todd Palin. (Not hardly!) And various folks claiming to work for newspapers, federal agencies, and one nice gentleman from Nigeria who offered me the chance to make a million dollars. (I really DO need to get back to that guy.)
However I have also been contacted by somebody who knew all about Willow Palin's night of housebreaking. (They did.) A guy who claimed he worked as Sarah Palin's head of security. (He was.) The BBC asking for an interview. (They got one.) And this guy named Joe McGinniss who wanted to ask me some questions for a book he was writing. (Well you know how that one turned out.)
So when I received an e-mail from some guy claiming to be Bill Fulton, I thought "Could be him." And indeed it was.
Fulton was impressed that I had figured out that he was the informant, but also wanted to correct me on what I got wrong. But only if I promised to keep what he told me to myself.
And I have.
So from there Bill and I began to have a number of e-mail exchanges and phone calls, often late at night, where he could finally get things off his chest that he couldn't share with anybody else and also tell somebody, sort of in the media, what was really going on.
Well not EVERYTHING of course, because Fulton is not allowed to talk about ongoing investigations, but enough for me to begin to understand some very interesting things about the Republican party in Alaska, the behind the scenes stories concerning the Miller campaign, and a certain ex-Governor's involvement in both.
Of course while THAT allowed Bill to get things off HIS chest it also
burdened ME with information that I could know but never use on the blog. Lucky
me right? (Though there WERE a few times when it was agreed that some of Fulton's information could find its way into a
blog post or
two.)
During this time Fulton always said that after the trial, and after Schaeffer Cox was sentenced, he would go public. Schaeffer has
now been sentenced, and true to his word Fulton has started talking.
First to
Salon.
And then to the
Huffington Post. (You gotta love that story about paranoid Joe Miller and the bullet proof vest!)
Also part of our agreement was that I would have the opportunity to officially interview Bill on the record, which I have. All or part of that interview is scheduled for a post on Monday.
However Bill felt he owed me a little something extra, so, and this was totally his idea, he has volunteered to answer some of YOUR questions as well.
I will have more information about how that will be structured for you by Monday. But until then simply think up what you would like to ask a man who was in the room when Sarah Palin's surrogates planned to take over the Republican party, was deeply embedded in Joe Miller's failed campaign in 2010, and who had to listen as members of a lunatic fringe plotted to murder federal agents in rural Alaska.
And they say blogging is boring.
