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Boise's Watergate
University Place and All The Governor's
Men
by
Deep Throat II
Chapter 2 - All The Governor's Men
“Of course it was a fix.
It’s an incestuous mess.”
-- Former Idaho State Senator Stan Hawkins (R-Ucon)
The
University Place fiasco was a time bomb waiting to
happen. As University
of Idaho Executive Director and whistleblower Wayland Winstead wrote in his
now famous memo, University Place was a “speculative real estate
development” that threatened “an Enron-like implosion of our finances.”
The University Place
project was a failed attempt by a group of good ol’ boys – and outside
developers – to purportedly create a U of I extension in downtown Boise two
blocks away from rival Boise State University (BSU). The U of I’s main
campus is in Moscow, Idaho, several hundred miles north of Boise. Boise is
Idaho’s capital and largest city (pop. 200,000 in the Treasure Valley, pop.
450,000).
The deficit project was
finally halted after a reporter from a Pullman-Moscow newspaper submitted a
public information request and blew the lid off all the nefarious financial
activities by the perps. The Idaho State Board of Education (SBOE) then
hired a Special Deputy Attorney General (SDAG), Larry Prince of law firm
Holland & Hart, to investigate the University Place fiasco. Almost a year
later, on Dec 5, 2003, Larry Prince and staff produced a 603-page report,
including over 100-pages of review and investigation by Big Eight accounting
and project management firm KPMG. This investigation has cost the Idaho
taxpayers over $1 million to date and pulled in the US Attorney for
white-collar crime from Oregon, Allan Garten, for federal criminal
investigation, Latah County Prosecutor Bill Thompson for state criminal
investigation, Idaho Attorney General Lawrence Wasden for state civil
investigation, and the FBI for possible RICO Act (racketeering and
corruption) violations. The major participants in this scandal include
Governor Dirk Kempthorne, the Governor’s former Chief of Staff Phil Reberger,
former U of I President Robert Hoover, former U of I VP Jerry Wallace,
former U of I Foundation President Pat McMurray, lawyer-lobbyist and partner
Roy Eiguren at law firm Givens Pursley, CEO Steve Semingson of California
development firm Cryptic Partners (Civic Partners), and a host of
others such as Idaho House Speaker Bruce Newcomb.
As you
will soon discover, there were many other powerful perps, lawyers and
supposedly upstanding citizens, involved in Boise’s Watergate. You will
also discover that the University Place fiasco was not an accident or simple
project mismanagement. It was not what it appeared to be. It was bad. And
it was nation-wide.
Former Idaho State Senator Stan Hawkins (R-Ucon), 18-year veteran legislator
who voted “No” on the University Place project said it best, “Of course it
was a fix. It’s an incestuous mess.”
Winstead and Hawkins
were correct but Boise’s Watergate scandal is much more than that.
(...more...available now at online bookstore)
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