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The government’s star witness against Ted Stevens gave dramatic testimony Tuesday that he lavished the Republican senator with gifts and arranged widespread renovations to the senator’s chalet in a ski town in Alaska.
Bill Allen, in the first of two days of testimony that could determine the outcome of the case, described his close personal friendship with Stevens and how he, as head of the now-defunct Veco Corp. oil-services firm, played the main role in the gift-giving scandal that has landed the longest-serving Senate Republican in criminal court.
Allen, 71, spoke slowly and stuttered, the result of a 2001 motorcycle accident in which he sustained brain damage from slamming his head onto pavement. But he showed that his memory was still intact, detailing his rise from humble roots in New Mexico, how he dropped out of school to support his family and later turned Veco from a small firm of 10-12 employees into a $1 billion company.
“Ted is right over there,” Allen said, pointing to the 84-year-old senator at the request of Joseph Bottini, a Justice Department prosecutor. Stevens, remaining expressionless, looked coldly back at his friend of some 25 years.
Allen first met Stevens in 1982, when the senator was helping with Frank Murkowski’s Senate campaign, and said his friendship with the senator blossomed to the point where they traveled together on fishing trips in the lower 48 states and with one another from Washington to Anchorage. Allen said the two regularly vacationed in “boot camp” in Arizona and California, where they would “try to keep some pounds off” and would sacrifice hard liquor but would still smoke cigars and drink wine. The prosecution showed a picture of Stevens and Allen catching salmon on the Kenai River in Alaska.
The friendship grew to the point where Allen allegedly gave Stevens lucrative gifts.
In 1999, Allen said that he gave the senator a brand-new, “fully loaded” Land Rover in exchange for $5,000 in cash and Stevens’s 1964 Mustang, which Allen said was worth between $15,000 and $20,000.
“Why did you go ahead and enter into this agreement?” Bottini asked.
“Because I like Ted,” Allen said.
According to Allen, Stevens later offered to trade shotguns and rifles so he could have the Mustang back, but Allen resisted, saying it would create the appearance of impropriety.
Also in 1999, Allen said he gave Stevens for free a $5,000-$6,000 generator the senator wanted installed to protect against a possible Y2K shutdown. Allen also said he was fulfilling a Stevens request to add a new ground level to the senator’s home in Girdwood so his children and grandchildren had a place to stay when they went skiing.
On Wednesday, Allen will be on the stand for about four more hours, followed by cross-examination, in which defense attorneys will look to impugn Allen’s credibility. Allen has already pleaded guilty to bribery in corruption cases involving two Alaskan state legislators, and he is the subject of a felony investigation into whether he had sex with an underage girl. Judge Emmet G. Sullivan said defense attorneys could not detail the alleged sex scandal, but could bring up the fact that he is under investigation.
Also, the defense will try to show that Allen was overzealous and acted of his own accord to make additions at Stevens’s home when the senator was working 3,500 miles away in Washington.
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