Unnamed Sources Were Joe McGinniss’s Only Choice To Protect People

The story needed to be told and unnamed sources were the only way it could be done. I commented on Joe McGinniss’ blog a while back that I was not going to buy his book because he was attacking some of his supporters and Alaskan bloggers. Later someone told me I had to read The Rogue because he discussed the typical bullying and intimidation that happens in rural Alaska similar to what I had experienced. So, I changed my mind and bought it. He nails it. I enjoyed the book because even though he probably does not agree with me he described Sarah Palin as the psychopath that she is.

Joe McGinniss wrote an article for USA Today explaining his necessity for unnamed sources in Alaska:

"Why is anonymous sourcing OK in Washington or New York but not in Alaska, where the consequences of being quoted by name can be far more severe? In Alaska, people refuse to speak on the record about Palin for fear of losing their livelihoods, and threats of violence.”

They can also be arrested, wrongfully imprisoned, have their property stolen, be blocked from getting their PFD, have their beloved pet harmed, end up with a severe case of PTSD, become suicidal and end up disabled and much more.

“As I document through named sources in my book, throughout her career in public office, Palin — often with the assistance of her husband, Todd — has relied on intimidation to silence her critics. She and her husband have a long-standing and well-deserved reputation for settling scores, for seeking vengeance, for exacting retribution from those they believe have been disloyal.”

This paragraph describes just a few of the many Sarah and Todd Palin psychopathic behaviors. Not only are people afraid of the Palins they also have their flying monkeys who attack people verbally or in written form, spread rumors, make threatening phone calls, sabotage jobs and exclude people from social activities. People also have to worry about the effect the disclosure of their name might have on their spouse, children or other relatives. The fear is well founded.

After about nineteen or twenty months of workplace bullying while working at a very backwards and dysfunctional hospital called Norton Sound Hospital (Norton Sound Health Corporation) in Nome Alaska I had a complete melt down. This was after I had been bewildered about what was going on there and watched several others lose it in as little as three months before me. If I had been in most other states rather than the criminal charges I would have been sent for psychiatric help for the traumatic injury that was caused to my psyche, then there would have been an investigation of what was going on at that hospital. Instead I was arrested with a crazy number of charges, many were based on out and out lies. Workplace bullies don’t give a target help, they continue to try and destroy them. The torture was continued afterwards by the workplace bullies and their sycophants in the village as well as a malfeasant prosecutor manipulated by them, a drunken public defender (and some sober ones), a judge who doesn’t seem to know what due process is and clearly was protecting the psychopaths who caused the problem to begin with due to wanting to stay on the bench. This was a mobbing that even included lies written about me in the newspaper.

I stayed in this village awaiting a trial they would never allow to happen, I thought I was still in the United States, so I kept pushing for due process. At one point I asked the judge in a note if Nome had broken off from Alaska and floated over to Russia. All they did was cancel hearings over an over, not notify me of dates of hearings and finally a public defender told me lies to get me to take a plea (no deal). The judge tried to block me from going to one hearing telling the public defender the defendant did not need to go to that type of hearing, this was because they were railroading me and knew I would be outraged by what was going to happen. They would either move my hearings to the end of the day or have them in a very small courtroom with no one else around because I would speak up. They don’t like it when people speak up in Nome. The judge would tell me I had a lawyer and I would ask him if he was sure about that.

Several people tried to convince me to run from Alaska while all I was capable of doing was fighting back and one was angry at me for not doing so. I was told by outside sources the judicial system here is corrupt, they we certainly right, but it is also ineptitude. I could not have imagined a place in the United States where running from a corrupt court system would be necessary at that time. I am much wiser now. I know a lot more about psychopaths, workplace bullying and Alaska’s corruption now. I probably should have run, but that just is not me. Instead I have been outspoken about all of it. What I have learned is that when there is great corruption there is no justice.

I got permission finally to go visit a relative in the lower 48 who claimed he was very ill (that’s another story). While there I got strange phone calls from the public defender agency. First they said the prosecutor was upset I had not given them my flight itinerary, but I had taken it to their office with lots of details along with the phone number and address of where I would be. Interesting they were able to find the phone number that was included in that information to call me isn’t it. I was also told that my public defender had to leave town suddenly. I said, “You mean she went to rehab?” Next phone call was a statement that the prosecutor wanted to know if I was coming back because if I was not he would not be preparing the case. I was puzzled as to why they would think I was not coming back. Relatives had heard my side of the conversation and said, “He does not want you to come back.” I stated that he was getting a big surprise as I wanted a trial to address all the lies.

They prevented me from having a trial and they worked to that end from both sides. The public defender who manipulated that was appointed magistrate in Kotzebue. Quid pro quo?

The defense was a cluster even though I kept telling them what needed to be done, while calling supervisors, legislators, and the governor‘s office to complain. It was very shocking to me just how screwed up some of the people who run the agencies were. I did not understand the appointing of inexperienced, inept, sycophants to cover Palin’s ass thing yet. At that time I had no idea that Sarah Palin was not a real governor and in fact most likely a psychopath running a scam. Trying to deal with these people is a frustrating nightmare and results in more bullying, sabotaging and retaliation, especially when you ask them why they don’t have a clue what they are doing. There is no accountability. The most obvious evidence the public defender agency was compromised was the fact that twice I had done research myself to gather evidence which they refused to have staff verify and then told me they would just call on me to testify and be my own expert witness, yep they did that twice. They never did call on me to present this information. I fell for that twice.

I thought the second one who pulled this might be a real lawyer. As it turns out he had been in some trouble in Texas where he came from and had been a prosecutor. Yes, pne of my defense attorneys was a former prosecutor from Texas. Quinlan Steiner, the PD agency director told me this manipulation to get me to shut up about putting a real defense together was the fault of just one of the public defenders, but the second lie came out of another one’s mouth. That means it is S.O.P.

Then later because I was on disability I had limited choices for places to rent, ended up in a dump and was accused by a conman landlord and his abusive brother falsely of a crime I believe one perpetrated on the other and then scapegoated first one person, then when that did not pan out I was accused. They were covering for an insurance scam, angry at me for using the landlord tenant act to recover money they owed me, etc. The one starved/tortured my cat and stole or destroyed my property. This was not new behavior for him. This all happened while several government agencies, the governor’s office, corrections staff and the public defender agency were told by myself due to this man’s psychopathy it was happening. The state troopers also knew he would steal my property and one of them took pictures of all of my property before he had to arrest me (I am sure he knew I was innocent) due to a warrant issued from Judge Esch in Nome hundreds of miles away based on no evidence, just the word of two lying conmen and the manipulation of a malfeasant prosecutor. The state troopers destroyed those pictures, never charged either of these men with crimes and then told several lies about it. Almost none of the paperwork was sent to me when I made a FOIA request. Later when I was released I got a court order to get my property and a state trooper blocked me from getting it, except some token items the conman gave him as if I had left a few things there. This trooper then threatened to arrest me for disorderly conduct for getting upset about it. He became very angry when I said I was calling my attorney for some reason.

As I have discussed before in some detail I was moved around to four different prisons/jails while being told I was going to a hearing in Nome (I never got to Nome), was tortured, denied access to a defense attorney who should have immediately gotten me released, denied health care (it was dangerous), my medication was abruptly stopped (dangerously) they tried to put me in administrative segregation for writing grievances (and more) and bullied by corrections officers. I saw horrors and experienced some. I had a nervous breakdown at the fourth facility and ended up in the mental health unit, it was like a medieval torture chamber. The moving of inmates like this is done by immigration often to block access to media, family and break the inmate. I asked them if I was at Abu Ghraib. They made me beg them for toilet paper and fed me a very low calorie diet. I lost eight pounds in just a few days. Then after all this a psychologist who had never even had a conversation with me presented in my window and said, “You don’t have a mental illness, you are just arrogant and nasty.” What kind of mood did he think I was going to be in wrongfully arrested, PTSD meds abruptly stopped, knowing my cat was being harmed, property was being stolen and all the rest? This is how they do things here. No conversation with a patient never stops them from just making up the conclusion they want.

Later as I have also written in detail, I was harassed by probation officers in a rather illogical way on several occasions which I believe was encouraged by outside influence. Remember the harassment about “prescription strength Tylenol” and when I told them there was no such thing they threatened to send me to prison? Not only a violation of my civil rights, but also pretty strange.

While still in Nome where the workplace bullying leading to the meltdown happened I was harassed when I went to the grocery store or a restaurant, severely medically bullied at the only clinic which was also at the hospital where I was workplace bullied, had an attorney I tried to hire do strange things like laugh when my name was called in court, was bullied by my public defender who liked to meet with me when no one else was in the office (no witnesses), had the judge and director of the public defender agency become abusive when I pointed out she had big problems, received death threats on my phone and whispered threats in public. There was an incident in Nome’s history similar to something in Joe’s book, a minister who wanted bar hours reduced had death threats leading him to have people stay with him at the church for protection.

All this time I had no job or income for seven months. The doctors refused to fill out the paperwork I needed to apply for disability, the Social Security people had to fly me to Anchorage to see a psychiatrist who had come up from the lower 48 instead and I was told the doctors have a history of not filling out Social Security paperwork. I was suicidal with the original melt down, received no help, and was even left alone for a month with the staff at the hospital knowing I was suicidal. Apparently they knew workplace bullying was happening and did not care people were being harmed. They also did not care that sometimes in these situations the bullying target can become violent in a murder/suicide against those who have destroyed their lives because the bullying was allowed to continue.

When I requested the judge allow me to go for help in the courtroom, he told me my besotted public defender would help me, I said that she would not and he did nothing. Hell, I would have been surprised if she could find the right forms to fill out. I was continually re-traumatized over and over and could not get any help over a very long period of time. This was a clear set up to traumatize someone severely, believe me they know exactly what they are doing. They have little networks that are well established to destroy people, they work together, it‘s gang mobbing. Those who have lived in Alaska a long time know about it. I could not have even imagined that people could be so evil and even more bizarre to me is that it is allowed and there is no response from the government unless you have money or power when complaints are made.

Within the social services and mental health communities in rural Alaska there is gossiping and sabotaging with respect to patients and many practitioners in the Anchorage area are quite disgusted by it. It is just about impossible to get help unless you are for some reason liked by the practitioners. They seem to like uneducated, compliant people who just go with the flow and don’t question them. When you work with people like that you don’t have to know what you are doing, so they run off any client that has a clue.

It is also clear that some of them don’t like people with left leanings. That immature right wing cliquish behavior does go on with them in a most unprofessional way. Isolation from influence from highly skilled, ethical and trained colleagues and lack of educational opportunities are a large part of the problem. Then there is that right wing distrust of scientific education as well. I have been misdiagnosed over and over with some really strange conclusions, often completely contradicting each other. I do have rather severe PTSD and I was suicidal, but in the rural areas there is no point in even trying to get counseling. It is just going to cause more trauma. Once I called the suicide hotline and the guy who answered said, “I don’t know why they are sending those calls to me.” This is just one of many reasons people learn not to seek help for mental health issues, frustration of trying to get help traumatizes the patient even more.

The bullying behavior in the social services includes the homeless shelters on the Kenai Peninsula. After being wrongfully imprisoned I had a court order that I could not go to the place I had lived to even get my property and my cat was very ill and mentally disturbed from being tortured. So was I. I was wrongfully accused, wrongfully imprisoned and the court blocked me from getting my property and the state of Alaska dumped me back in Homer homeless. I unfortunately had to go to the shelter. I was bullied by the director of the shelter in a group with multiple witnesses, two were so horrified they got up and left. There were other issues, I had to make lots of phone calls on my cell phone to try to get things done and I was harassed about going outside to make phone calls which is the only place I could get reception. Rather than be supportive they took every opportunity they could to belittle me or harass me. I also witnessed them doing this to others. What kind of women’s shelter is that? They also had people on drugs and alcohol causing problems and were indignant about complaints. One day I and another woman witnessed another resident who was so drunk and high she passed out standing at the kitchen sink, head first into the sink. When I went to this shelter I was just trying to hold on to my sanity by a thread in total disbelief that there were so many horrible people in this state and it included the government agencies. The way I was treated was unconscionable and I did not know then what I know now, they gossip from place to place and spread information which is often false about people here. It is one of the ways they seek to harm. When I attempted to go to a board meeting to discuss the bullying the director turned out to be the chairman and I was not allowed to attend. The bullying director was the chair of the board overseeing her performance in that agency, that is not a good sign.

When I was in the shelter in Kenai I complained about the filth in the bathrooms and crazy behaviors of the those who were clearly on drugs. It took me three hours to clean a bathroom one day. They like the drugged people who are too high to care about their surroundings so they keep them and throw out the non-crazy acting sober people. The staff was very dysfunctional staying in the office and gossiping rather than interacting with clients. There was a drug lock up and narcotics were frequently taken from client prescriptions by staff. I was bullied after complaining about problems by being moved several times to what they considered problem rooms in rapid succession. I witnessed them do something really awful to a woman who was an alcoholic in recovery and she relapsed. They would do things like tell someone as they were cooking dinner for the whole place they had to pack their things and move to another room. If they really wanted to be assholes they would do that and then tell the woman she had to have a meeting the next morning with the director, but refused to tell her why. It was clear this was being done on purpose just to cause people to blow up. It was really sick. These are well known tactics of serial bullies. I was put in a room with a woman who was constantly manipulating for drugs, she told me to go to a doctor and fake a back injury and request Oxycontin. My reaction was WTF and no way, she then started telling staff all kinds of lies about me to cause me trouble. She was a very sick woman and the social workers on staff should have been able to figure this out. Other residents witnessed incidents where nothing happened yet she ran off all histrionic to complain to staff. This woman wanted to get her grandbaby who was in foster care due to her daughter being incarcerated. We told staff we were horrified by this. She was on so much Valium she would drop the baby and one day a blood curdling scream came out of her room from the baby, OCS was called and the baby was removed. I can only imagine what happened, but it was so obvious something was going to happen, that I was stunned by the inept decisions of the staff. It was really weird how they tried to help this woman get that baby when she was clearly a danger to it. They kept this woman and others who caused lots of problems for long periods of time. The director threw me out on a day I had just been to see a nurse practitioner who almost put me in the hospital. I had a very high fever. She most likely had gossip from the director in Homer that I tried to talk to the board about her and she decided to dump me to shut me up. How is that shutting me up thing working for ya?

The only place I could go was a horrible hotel which has the nickname of Sodom and Gomorrah. It was like living in hell, prostitutes, drunks passed out in the hall, noise all night, cigarette smoke. Yes, it was very similar to the women’s shelter, only I had a clean bathroom and no psycho-woman in my room trying to get me to get her Oxycontin from a doctor. If I had ended up homeless on the streets they would have been even more pleased to throw me out. I had no other option due to my income level and the multiple charges out of Nome. I certainly could not go back to the shelter in Homer. This is in contrast to Brother Francis in Anchorage where they do their darndest to treat everyone with dignity and don’t put up with bad behavior. The interesting thing is the two women’s shelters on the Kenai are attractive yet people are treated ugly on the inside while Brother Francis is utilitarian with a system that welcomes people with warmness. They put up with dysfunctional behavior of the mentally ill and are very good at managing the severely mentally ill people who come to their shelter.

I have two friends who have also been thrown out of both of these shelters, it is a frequent occurrence and an extension of the bullying that starts with the directors and runs down through the staff . One of my friends said to me, “They threw us out because we are better than they are.” I told her no, they threw us out because they felt we were a threat to their dysfunction, bullying and incompetence being exposed. Someone should send them a memo that this tactic does not shut up some personality types. It is interesting that the two best staff from the shelter in Homer had been fired and were working in Kenai when I got there. I bet they are gone from Kenai by now. 

The point of discussing this is to demonstrate that even psychiatric information is not confidential in Alaska, they will gossip about clients. This changes attitudes and outcomes for people. Those doing the gossiping have an agenda and a reason they want to harm a particular person and it is generally to protect themselves from their own incompetence or unethical behavior.

 I have asked staff at HHS what they are doing about this. They are very aware of it yet have no solutions. They are always willing to laugh at my stories such as the social worker who told me to hitch hike from Homer to Anchorage to check myself into the hospital while suicidal as it would be safe due to my not being a young, cute girl or the doctor who told me I was bipolar when I described symptoms similar to MS and sleeping problems or the psychologist who after I described a story about corrupt cops who were drug dealers and a hospital that was scamming the government big time in a border town in New Mexico which ended in me putting my possessions in storage and running because I was afraid I would be found dead in the desert wrote in his notes simply that I had a problem at work so I left town. When I read that one from my medical record late at night I laughed so loud I was afraid I had disturbed my sleeping neighbor. Then there was the incident in which a social worker told me I was paranoid with psychotic tendencies (but I was not allowed to see the psychiatrist for three months) and then a psychologist a couple days later told me there was absolutely nothing wrong with me. A friend called me a few days later and said he had sent a letter to someone we knew soliciting sex in exchange for him helping her keep her child, guess I wasn‘t young and cute enough to get offers of sex. The public defender agency had someone who was not licensed to even diagnose, make a crazy diagnosis for me over the phone from another state. His diagnosis was so nuts I called the board of licensing in that state and found out he was not licensed as a psychologist and they investigated. The public defender was delighted at his diagnosis and had called me in when normally she would refuse to see me to try to prove I was wrong about the PTSD, I just laughed and told her it was ridiculous. Then they had a psychiatrist from another state who put about twenty-five false items in a report for the court about me that included the false statement that my father sexually molested me when I was a child. At first I thought he sent them the wrong report, but after thinking about his narcissism I began to suspect psychopathy. It is possible he gave the public defender agency exactly what they asked him to put in the report, who knows. Several psychiatrists have told me I have PTSD which is more than obvious and so is the fact that I meet some of the criteria for Obsessive/Compulsive Personality Disorder, but not enough for a diagnosis. OCPD characteristics are often found in critical care nurses. Now dammit everyone go wash your hands and use proper procedure.

In Homer I was bullied by some of the right wing bullies there when I held an Obama sign across from the poling place. I asked the staff at the poling place where I should stand and even called the police to ask them to clarify it. I knew they would cause trouble. The police in many of the small towns in Alaska only react to those with power, money or influence so they did not respond to my call. They only came when the right wingers in the poling place decided to change the door they measure picketing distance from in the middle of an election after years of using another door. They called the police to move me three times that day while right wing wack jobs drove up and down the street honking and flipping me off.

There were other things that happened like not getting my PFD. The year I was wrongfully arrested I had applied three times and kept being told they did not have a record of my application. In fact I had a letter ready to be mailed to them right next to me that I had just written the night of the arrest.

I have so many more stories and examples, but these should serve to support what Joe McGinnis is saying about people who are afraid to go on the record here in Alaska. I am outspoken, pissed off, disgusted and outraged by all of this and will not be shut up. Yes, it can get really ugly and dangerous here, you better believe it. I have been listening to The Help by Kathryn Stockett. The black maids in the book talk about how a white woman could blackball them from getting a job as a maid and influence their landlord to evict them while convincing all the others not to rent to them. It so reminds me of what goes on in Alaska. But, just like Joe McGinnis discusses in his book Alaska also has some wonderful people who would do anything to help people. I call them the real Alaskans.

I contacted the governor’s office under Sarah Palin about many of these issues because silly me I thought they would want to actually fix the problems. I sent a fifty page letter with twenty pages of documentation attached , sent multiple emails, and made phones calls sometimes daily to them. I was ignored and hung up on. We now know the governor’s office under Sarah Palin was essentially closed for business, except for grifting, manipulating and bullying. Eventually I was told the Department of Law-lessness told them not to talk to me or help me. They were too busy working to cover up and manipulate the truth about Palin’s unethical behaviors to do much of anything else. Talis Colberg, the Attorney General was a sycophant put in place by psychopath Sarah Palin to use for unethical activities.

So, while people may find the bullying Joe McGinniss wrote about difficult to swallow I think he may be sugar coating it for two reasons. He may not want to piss off people in Alaska by telling the whole truth and he may feel people in the lower 48 just won’t believe the whole truth as it is just too hard to believe. For one thing the threats with guns that goes on here would result in arrests in other states. We have seen this lack of understanding of Alaskan culture with regard to the MSM and some reviewers of his book because they don’t have enough information to actually know what they are talking about, so they base it on how things work where they live. Joe McGinniss came here and experienced some of the threats and bullying himself. I could hardly imagine it myself even while it was happening which is one reason it made me so sick, so I understand why they don‘t get it but Joe is not exaggerating. His writing rings very true.