Berkowitz said today that some of the earlier corruption trials gave him an idea that Veco officials had been talking about the race. “I knew the substance of the stuff. It just never had been spelled out this way,” he said. “It’s not a surprise that with the stakes as high as they were with the oil and gas tax, with the Murkowski gas proposal, that people fought hard. What’s wrong is that they broke the rules … and what’s wrong is that public officials were corrupted and seemingly broke their oath.”

The federal government late Wednesday indicted the most powerful legislator yet in its wide-ranging investigation of Alaska government corruption.The charges stem from attempts to influence the process in Alaska’s efforts to get a natural gas pipeline, at a time when decisions worth $60 billion were being made. “It felt like it was a rigged system with this particular issue,” said former Rep. Ethan Berkowitz, D-Anchorage, then the House Democratic Leader. “As little pieces emerge, it becomes clearer.”

Senator John Cowdery now joins eight other indicted state leaders as federal authorities rope the longtime sitting Anchorage Senator into a wide-sweeping corruption probe into VECO. Berkowitz says, “It’s not a surprise VECO wanted me out of the race…I’d been a vigorous opponent of the bad Murkowski deal with the oil companies and on a gasline. So VECO knew where I stood. They knew I wasn’t going to move. They knew I was standing solid for the public interest.”

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After a day of speculation the name is out. Sen. John Cowdery is the latest lawmaker to be indicted in the ongoing VECO corruption case. Berkowitz, who had spoken out against VECO on the House floor, was Olson’s opponent in the Democratic primary for lieutenant governor in 2006. “The indication is that I was specifically targeted by VECO,” Berkowitz said Thursday. “And in some ways, that’s a testament to the fact that I stood up against them.”