Along the way Allen, the government's chief witness, told of the money, jobs and favors he dispensed to Kott, a man he described as a friend and reliable ally but who could wind up in prison on Allen's testimony.
As word of Allen's impending visit to the courtroom got around town at lunchtime, the federal courtroom of U.S. District Judge John Sedwick began to fill, eventually drawing more than 60 people. Some were lawyers or paralegals working for other potential defendants or witnesses. The back row held gray-haired remnants of the liberal Democrats who flexed so much power in Juneau in the 1970s before oil-friendly Republicans made them largely irrelevant, while up front sat a conservative talk show host who fought Veco's efforts a few years back to pay for government out of the Permanent Fund. Other spectators just wanted a glimpse of history.
But the real business of the day was what Allen told the jury about Kott, a 14-year veteran of the state House from Eagle River. Allen and one of his vice presidents, Rick Smith, pleaded guilty to bribery and conspiracy and are hoping to get reduced sentences by cooperating with federal authorities.
Over nearly three hours of testimony that will resume this morning, Allen talked about overpaying a flooring job done by Kott by more than $7,000 and of scheming to get at least some of that money to Kott's son so that he could work on Kott's 2006 campaign, when a poll showed he was in surprising trouble. Even the poll itself was secretly paid for by Veco, which if true would be a hidden -- and illegal -- campaign contribution by the company to Kott.
"Why were you trying to get money to Pete Kott for his son's help in the campaign?" asked assistant U.S. Attorney James Goeke.
"He was going to run again and he needed his son to help him," Allen said.
"What would his son be doing otherwise?" asked Goeke.
"A job," Allen said. "He can do the floors as good as Pete."
"So back on July 31, 2006, do you know if Mr. Kott was going to be able to go to work on the campaign and do other work?" continued Goeke.
"He couldn't afford it," said Allen. "He has a family to take care of."
Before announcing he would run again, Kott had been making noises about retiring and had talked with Allen about work. Some of those conversations were recorded by the FBI.
In one such, on June 1, 2006, Kott joked with Allen that he wanted to be warden of the prison Veco was building in Barbados, "especially with all the women there on the beaches." He said he'd do anything, even pass out beach towels.
Allen testified that he knew Kott was joking about that. But Kott also said on the recording that he wanted to be a lobbyist.
"For Veco?" Goeke asked in court Wednesday.
"Yes," Allen answered.
Veco lobbyists made $6,000 to $12,000 a month, Allen testified. And he would have hired Kott, he said.
But even as he provided the evidence about Kott, and along the way implicated his own company and its executives in an illegal campaign contribution scam, Allen never once acknowledged that a specific action by him or Kott broke the law.
While Allen, 70, has never been shy about appearing at public events and private fundraisers over the last quarter century as his political power grew, he has only rarely engaged in public speaking. His speech has been impaired since 2001 when, riding without a helmet, he crashed his motorcycle. On the witness stand, he said about a quarter of the part of his brain that controls speech died after the accident, and, like some stroke victims, he has trouble picking out words. He also has trouble hearing, and a court headset he wore while testifying proved balky at times.
At one point, he started to describe what the oil companies wanted most out of Juneau, then had to pause.
"Wait, I got to find this word," he said. He closed his eyes, put his head in his hands and worked something over in his mind for what seemed a small eternity while the courtroom, in silence, waited for him to speak.
"Certainty!" he finally exclaimed. "They wanted certainty." In other words, they wanted to be sure that taxes would not be raised before they would agree to build a natural gas pipeline, the thrust of the efforts on the so-called PPT -- petroleum profits tax -- that tied the 2006 Legislature in knots.
Allen took the industry lead in promoting a low profits tax -- a much bigger effort than the producers themselves were making. FBI-intercepted telephone calls and conversations at a hotel suite in Juneau show that Kott and Senate President Ben Stevens were his two most helpful soldiers.
In one conversation from June 8, 2006, played while Allen was on the stand, he recalled a discussion he had with the head of Conoco Phillips in Alaska, Jim Bowles, about the profits tax.
"I said between Pete Kott and Ben ... they won't have, they won't even have their fingerprints on the (bill)." It seemed Allen was referring to the "fingerprints" of the producers, but his remarks were ambiguous enough that they could have been those of Stevens and Kott.
As the tapes were played, Allen testified he had no idea that his phones were taped or that a secret camera had been placed in his hotel suite in Juneau by the FBI under a court order.
"If I knew that, I wouldn't have said all this stuff," Allen said, drawing smiles from the jury and chuckles around the courtroom. He learned he was the target of the Justice Department's Public Integrity Section on Aug. 30, 2006 -- a day before the FBI executed a series of raids on legislative offices.
Allen emerged as one of the industry's biggest promoters in the 1980s, when Veco began a long run as a reliable source of campaign contributions, mainly for Republicans. At the time, Allen testified, his main political hand was the former state senator and trooper head Ed Dankworth, sometimes referred to as the "21st Senator" for his efforts at organizing the Senate into blocs long after he left the body.
Allen said he and Dankworth had a thorough falling-out after he bought the Anchorage Times in 1989. One of his biggest financial supporters in his journalism venture was Chuck Robinson, the long-time executive of the telephone company ACS, Allen said. Dankworth lobbied for ACS' chief rival, GCI, and Dankworth refused Allen's pleas to switch.
"If you can't do that, Dankworth, I don't want you to be with me," Allen recalled telling his onetime friend.
Allen was born in Socorro, N.M., and left for Oregon with his family shortly after World War II, when he was 8 or 9. He missed several years of school while his family followed the fruit crops.
"We were pickers, I guess."
He quit school for good as a high school sophomore, then learned to weld, a skill that brought him to Alaska in 1968. With another oil field worker named Wayne Velti, who founded VE Construction, he worked the Cook Inlet rigs for Arco, eventually taking over the company and shortening its name. In the last few years, it had annual sales of $1 billion and 4,000 employees worldwide, about half in Alaska, he said. Last week, the company was taken over by CH2M Hill.
Find Richard Mauer at adn.com/contact/rmauer or call 257-4345. Find Lisa Demer at adn.com/contact/ldemer or 257-4390.
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