After Reading Vogler's Quotes, Rev. Wright Thought to Himself, “Now, that Motherfucker Was Crazy.”

“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.” …

“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!” a sentence so specific to its speaker's psychosis that it had never been uttered before and hasn't been uttered since.

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 (sic) gone bad.


“Plastics-explosives (sic) deal gone bad?” Dude, bad is how plastic-explosives deals go. If plastic-explosives deals could go well, they'd be called plastic-explosive purchases.

I can't believe I have to tell you that.