Week Two - Day One - Morning

Philip Munger: The morning was taken with cross, re-direct and re-cross testimony of ex-Veco CEO Bill Allen. John Henry Browne sought to continue chipping away at the perception jurors might have that Allen's testimony isn't influenced by the threat of the deal Allen has made with the Feds coming unglued. I'll address that this evening. But important information came out this morning, that I'll outline here:

1) A distinction seems to be emerging from Browne's inquiry into the nature of the agreement Allen has with the Feds between illegal payments, bribes and gifts, as being three separate matters addressed in the still sealed aspects of the overall set of cases.

2) Bill Allen's nephew, Dave Anderson, who came up in the earlier cases, was mentioned again today in context of the term "blackmail." But today, Browne elicited from Allen that the blackmail threats were directly connected with the remodeling of Ted Stevens's Girdwood home.

3) Bill Allen appears to have stipulated in his plea agreement with DoJ that he made over $400,000 in "illegal payments" to Alaska politicians. As Browne was continually attempting to differentiate between payments, bribes and gifts in his questioning, it appears there is a lot of room for speculation as to how much is still up in the air for future cases. But it is pretty clear that about $115,000 in "illegal payment money is unaccounted for so far, even when you count in Ben Stevens and Bruce Weyrauch.

4) When questioned about Ted's house improvements, Allen stated that those improvements aren't being counted in the "illegal payment" category.