Be careful when you start a harsh rumor. It may come back to harm you and innocent people.
Shari Holweg is finding that out today. And she's discovering that once released, rumors have a life of their own.Three people -- one of them Salt Lake Mayor-elect Rocky Anderson -- tell the Deseret News that just before the 1996 election, when Democrat Anderson was locked in a battle with Republican Merrill Cook to represent the 2nd Congressional District, Holweg told them that Cook had professed his love for her and that she had tapes of those conversations.
Both Cook and Holweg are married and both deny that Cook ever said those words to Holweg. Further, Holweg now denies there ever were such tapes.
But it has become clear, through various Deseret News interviews, that a "ruse" telephone call Holweg says she set up in late October 1996 to catch a suspected wiretapper falsely accused Cook, who is now her boss, of telling Holweg that he loved her.
Holweg admits that she also talked to members of Anderson's campaign about Cook just before the 1996 election, although she declines to give specifics about the conversations she had with Anderson and his two campaign workers. Cook defeated Anderson in that year's 2nd District race.
Holweg says the phone call and conversations with Anderson and his campaign volunteers Peggy Wilson and Dave Owen were part of an effort to catch a person or persons she believed were wiretapping her home telephone. And Holweg said she greatly regrets damage done to "innocent" bystanders, including Cook and his family.
But Cook says he doesn't hold a grudge against Holweg over the matter; that he understands why she did it and believes her when she says her telephone was bugged.
"When the first time I saw Shari after the (1996) election, in early March of '97, she told me then what she's repeated a few times (to me) about all that. And I accept it. I believe her," Cook said.
"I think that whole circumstance was unfortunate. But I also understand her feelings at the time and her motivations."
Questions and controversy
This latest twist in the bizarre Cook/Holweg incident comes to light as Cook faces questions about his hiring of Holweg earlier this year as his Utah director of outreach constituent services. Controversy over that hiring arose this fall as Cook and former Democratic 3rd Congressional District Rep. Bill Orton made charges of possible wiretapping in the 1996 election; as Cook and Holweg both deny that Cook hired her because of blackmail concerning tapes of telephone conversations made three years ago; and as Cook and Holweg both deny that Holweg isn't working 40 hours a week for her $49,000-a-year congressional salary.
Holweg won't discuss in detail her conversations with Anderson, Wilson and Owen, citing possible investigations by the FBI into the wiretapping allegations and the concerns of her personal attorney. Holweg doesn't accuse any of the three of actually being the suspected wiretapper.
"There was never anything improper about my relationship with Merrill Cook. There are no tapes (of phone conversations) and no such tapes existed in 1996," Holweg said. "I, and now others, know beyond any reasonable doubt that my home telephone conversations were electronically intercepted in the weeks leading up to the elections of 1996."
The whole incident started with Holweg's decision on Oct. 30, 1996, to "plant a ruse." She called her husband from her home telephone and told him something that she now admits was aimed at getting whoever was listening in on her phone to immediately start repeating the conversation. She wanted to shake people up.
"I came up with what I knew any person or persons listening would go for. I had one shot. And I needed to know" if her phone was being bugged, Holweg said.
"Did I ever dream that it would end up how and where it did? No. That's why I've said it was a ruse that almost worked too well. It's had ramifications (on Cook and others) that I never intended. But did it accomplish what I wanted it to? Yes, it did. Did innocent people get hurt? Yes they did.
'Startling news'
Holweg and Cook now hope an FBI investigation will verify two things: That her phone was bugged and who did it.
Holweg had met Cook several years before the 1996 elections. Although a Democrat, she liked his then-independent political ideas and had worked with him on citizen initiative petition drives and on various of Cook's independent campaigns. In fact, Holweg had been a top campaign worker in Cook's 1996 race, where he was running as a Republican.
But Holweg, who was then a Provo city councilwoman, left Cook's campaign in June when Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jim Bradley surprisingly picked her to be his lieutenant governor running mate.
Wilson, a volunteer on Anderson's '96 campaign, says just before the November election a Bradley campaign worker, whom Wilson declines to name, called her with some startling news.
The woman told Wilson that Holweg had some information that could be valuable to the Anderson campaign, Wilson said. Wilson called Holweg, who was evasive but agreed to a face-to-face meeting because Holweg feared her phones could be bugged, Wilson said.
After hearing Holweg's story, Wilson said she at first believed Holweg's claims that Cook had been abusive and was infatuated with her. "I thought she was a victim," Wilson said. But at the end of their encounters, Wilson thought Holweg a theatrical chameleon.
Wilson, Anderson and Owen agree that Holweg told them she had had a falling out with Cook, that Cook had promised her a salary in helping to run his 1996 campaign and that when Holweg left the campaign in June some money was still owed to her by Cook but he wouldn't pay her.
Holweg says today that she did have a disagreement with Cook in 1996 about money owed her. She said they have settled that disagreement but won't say if an accommodation was made.
Also at those meetings three years go, Wilson, Anderson and Owen say, Holweg said Cook professed personal affection for her. But Holweg still refused to return to Cook's campaign.
All three say Holweg told them that she had tapes of conversations with Cook backing her up. Wilson and Owen asked to hear the tapes, but Holweg never produced any. Anderson said he never asked to hear the tapes and didn't want to.
They didn't believe her
Anderson, who was elected Salt Lake mayor earlier this month, said he never took what Holweg was telling him seriously. The conversations took place the final weekend before the 1996 election, with polls showing Cook ahead of Anderson and Anderson concentrating on a hard, final push to Election Day.
Recalls Anderson: "She (Holweg) told me that she had passed up some other opportunities (in the job market) to work on Merrill Cook's (1996) congressional campaign. And because of his verbal abuse, she quit his campaign. And as a result suffered financial detriment. She intimated to me that she had some damaging information about (Cook). And told me about some tapes that she'd given her lawyer. But she was never clear about what was on the tapes, and I felt like, frankly, I was wasting my time talking with her about any of this. She did say (Cook) had told her that he got back into politics because he wanted her to work with him, that he loved her."
But, said Anderson, he has never believed that the Holweg/Cook relationship was anything more "than a loving friendship."
Said Anderson: "I want to make that very clear. Because she never said that there was anything sexual or that he came on sexually to her or that there was any disloyalty to Camille (Cook's wife). . . .
"It seemed to me that she was upset with him. That she was perhaps trying to cause some problems for him (in the 1996 election) but that there really wasn't anything of substance that would cause him any problems," Anderson said.
Owen, who has worked in several campaigns, including races by former GOP Rep. Enid Greene and Salt Lake mayoral candidate Rich McKeown, took a more cynical view. Said Owen: "I mean, Rocky didn't have any interest in making it a campaign issue. What we told Shari is, 'Look, if you want this guy (Cook) to go to Congress, you feel good about that, fine. . . . If you want to do something about it, then you hold a press conference.'
"It almost smelled like a trap to me at the time. I can't verify to you or make any statement about the veracity of anything that (Holweg) said. But I can tell you that she said it. She said it to me," Owen said. Holweg flatly denies she ever considered going public with anything detrimental about Cook just before the 1996 election.