Site Presented By
Friday, Jul 10, 2009
Alaskan Independence Party chairwoman Lynette Clark talks about why she doesn't identify herself as an American, and about her kindred spirit Sarah Palin.
Editor's note: You can find Salon's complete coverage of Sarah Palin here.
By David Talbot
Read more: Republican Party, David Talbot, Alaska, John McCain, Politics, News, 2008 election, Sarah Palin
Sept. 10, 2008 | "Country First!" That's the Republican battle cry this presidential season. But don't try selling that slogan to Lynette Clark, chairwoman of the Alaskan Independence Party, whose motto is "Alaska First -- Alaska Always."
Clark -- a blunt-spoken, gravel-voiced pioneer in the Alaska independence movement -- spoke with me from her home outside Fairbanks, where she and her husband, Dexter, another veteran Alaskan freedom fighter, work a gold mine claim. Clark was born in Illinois, moving with her family as a child to the Alaska territory in 1951. But, she says, "in my heart and mind, I'm an Alaskan. I don't identify myself as an American."
The Alaskan Independence Party burst into the national spotlight when Clark released a statement reporting that Sarah Palin and her husband, Todd, were both members. After the ensuing uproar, Clark issued an apology and correction, declaring that only Todd was an actual member of the AIP. (He belonged from 1995 to 2002.) The McCain campaign put out a statement denying the vice presidential nominee had ever been a member, but it said nothing about Todd Palin. Since then, other AIP members have offered conflicting information about Sarah Palin's affiliation with the party. And earlier this year, as governor, Palin addressed the AIP convention, stating that she shared the party's "vision."
"Keep up the good work," Palin told party members. "And God bless you."
Whether or not Palin herself was an AIP member, Clark makes it clear that the GOP vice presidential candidate is a kindred spirit.
"I've admired Sarah from the first time I met her at the 2006 (AIP) convention," which Palin also addressed, says Clark. "She impressed me so much. She's Alaskan to the bone; she's a damn good gal.
"As I was listening to her, I thought she sounds like what we've been saying for years. I thought to myself, 'My God, she sounds just like Joe Vogler.'"
Vogler was the craggy, fire-breathing secessionist who founded the Alaskan independence movement in the early 1970s. Among the colorful Vogler quotes now in circulation are "I'm an Alaskan, not an American. I've got no use for America or her damned institutions." Then there's "The fires of hell are glaciers compared to my hate for the American government." And "The problem with you John Birchers is that you are too damn liberal!"
Vogler ran unsuccessfully for governor three times between 1974 and 1986, on a platform promoting an "Independent Nation of Alaska." By the 1990s, Vogler had built party membership to about 20,000, and the party scored its first major electoral victory when former Republican Governor and U.S. Secretary of the Interior Wally Hickel joined the AIP and won the gubernatorial race.
By then, Vogler was close to achieving one of his major goals: speaking before the United Nations (despite his antipathy toward the international body) on Alaska independence. According to the AIP, Iran had offered to sponsor Vogler's appearance -- which surely would have been an unsettling moment for the United States in the U.N. assembly.
But in May 1993, Vogler disappeared. The following year, his remains were found in a gravel pit east of Fairbanks, wrapped in a blue tarp with duct tape. A convicted thief named Manfred West, who had worked as a campaign volunteer for Vogler, confessed to the crime, telling authorities that he had murdered Vogler in a plastics-explosives deal gone bad.
Lynette Clark doesn't buy the official version of Vogler's death. She calls his murder an "assassination."
"He was executed," she says. And other past and present AIP leaders agree with her. Jack Coghill, who served as Governor Hickel's lieutenant governor, declared that Vogler's murder was "the cleanest takeout" job he had seen.
"I will never believe that Fred West put a bullet in the back of Joe's head all by himself," Clark says. "Fred is a liar, cheat and thief. But he wasn't smart enough to pull it off alone."
Who does Clark believe was behind Vogler's elimination?
"I can only speculate. And I don't want to speculate because I don't want to catch a bullet the same way."
Clark asserts that the timing of Vogler's murder was suspicious, on the eve of his appearance before the United Nations. "The United States government would have been deeply embarrassed. And we can't have that, can we?" she says with a wry laugh.
Clark also points out that an independence movement that aims to wrest control of Alaska's enormous natural resources is bound to threaten powerful corporate interests. "Alaska is an incredibly resource-heavy republic. There are lots of pressures on us."
Next page: Clark won't be voting for Sarah Palin ...
