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 Holweg 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 said 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 for doing what she did."

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 wiretapper.

Still, by confirming her conversations with members of Cook's Democratic opponent's camp, Holweg is also confirming that the original ruse was in fact an untruth about Cook's personal life.

"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."

Does Cook blame Holweg for dragging him into this mess?

"Well, I really don't," Cook told the newspaper. "And I'll tell you that although I don't know firsthand what she may have said to the individuals you're asking about (Wilson, Anderson and Owen) or anybody else right at that time, I know that just days before an election all sorts of things occur that are unusual, bizarre and very often inaccurate. Those things happen in the heat of the final couple of days of an election. I've seen it time and time again in literally the eight races I've been in.

"Shari has explained to me what happened. And I accept it," Cook said.

'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, who was a volunteer on Anderson's '96 congressional 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 in fact infatuated with her. "I thought she was a victim," Wilson said. But at the end of their brief encounters, Wilson thought Holweg a chameleon, paranoid, a theatrical person who could cry at will and seemed to be playing a part.

Holweg says she did meet "briefly" with Wilson the weekend before the Tuesday final election, bringing along her husband. Holweg declines to be specific about that meeting. Holweg also says she met with Anderson and Owen, but declines to give specifics of those meetings as well.

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 since settled that disagreement, but won't comment on what accommodation, if any, was made.

Also at those meetings three years ago, 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.

Holweg now says there never were any tapes. When asked if, in her conversations with the three, she was simply continuing the ruse she'd set up on her telephone call to her husband, Holweg said: "That is correct."

They didn't believe her

Holweg declined to elaborate, saying her attorney has asked her not to "give the exact language" used in that telephone call because such information must be kept part of any FBI investigation.

But it's clear the conversations between Holweg and the Anderson camp raised eyebrows in Utah's political community after Cook hired Holweg in 1999 to work on his staff. Why would a woman, even though a former friend and confidant, deserve a job if she had said such terrible things about him?

That pointed question led, in turn, to rumors that Holweg was blackmailing Cook with the damning tapes, something both Cook and Holweg vehemently deny.

In a statement released to the Deseret News, Holweg said: "Hours after the ruse conversation I had with my husband, one of the people (the Deseret News talked to) left me a frantic recorded voice mail pleading with me to return their call."

Holweg believed that the person was reacting to the content of the ruse message -- that somehow that information had reached the Anderson campaign.

Holweg said the person calling was not Anderson himself; Wilson says she called Holweg only after hearing rumors "for months" about a Holweg/Cook blow-up and a tip from the Bradley campaign about those hard feelings.

"Later that same day," Holweg continues, "at the request of this person who initiated contact, I talked to the other two" people the Deseret News has interviewed. "Consequently and regrettably, some people were left with the wrong impression, but I felt it was necessary at the time."

Anderson and Owen, however, say they met several days later with Holweg, not in the same time frame that she recalls.

In other words, Holweg maintained the original telephone ruse when she talked with Wilson, Anderson and Owen.

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 (that 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 never believed, and doesn't believe now, 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). "And it seemed to me that that statement, if in fact it was ever made, that it was nothing more than him letting her know that he was fond of her, they'd worked together for a long time in the past, that he wanted her to come back and be associated with his campaign. " . . . she told me that he had offered her -- to make up for any financial detriment she had suffered -- he offered her a job, if he were elected, to come and do fund raising for him and she could keep a percentage of all the money that was raised in a re-election campaign.

"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.

Campaign shenanigans?

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. Then go ahead and keep your mouth shut. 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. Owen believed that Holweg was trying to set Anderson up. Owen feared that if Anderson went public the final weekend of the campaign about wrongful actions by Cook that Holweg would just deny everything, making Anderson look foolish at best, devious at worst. Owen said: "She was toying with the idea of going public with it. She said that Jim Bradley didn't want her to because she was the lieutenant governor candidate at the time. And that that was a complication." Holweg flatly denies she ever considered going public with anything detrimental about Cook just before the 1996 election. Rather, it was Owen and others who were telling her that she had to call a press conference and confront Cook herself, Holweg said.

Bradley, who in October was eliminated in the Salt Lake City mayoral primary, said he recalls little of the Holweg/Cook issue of 1996, when he was running for governor and had selected Holweg as his running mate.

He had several discussions with Holweg about Cook, Bradley says. But Cook was in the 2nd Congressional race, not the governor's race, and the issue didn't apply to him, Bradley said. He said he personally stayed out of it, and as Holweg's interest in the governor/lieutenant governor race dwindled as election day neared -- and Bradley was being swamped by GOP Gov. Mike Leavitt's huge re-election effort -- Holweg "just kind of backed out -- she really wasn't part of our effort or our campaign," Bradley said.

It appears Cook was worried about Holweg toward the end of the campaign. Anderson said that while he didn't necessarily believe Holweg, Cook did appear at Anderson's campaign headquarters the Friday night before the election, demanding to talk to Anderson. Anderson believed Cook wanted to confront him about rumors about Holweg. Cook said he did go to the Anderson headquarters, that he'd heard rumors that Holweg was going to say some untrue things about him and wanted to explain to Anderson that they weren't true. Ultimately, Cook and Anderson never talked about Holweg.

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And Wilson says that she "tweaked'" Cook about Holweg before the Cook/Anderson debates the week before the election.

"I'll be honest with you," Wilson said. "I was using everything I could in my power, within the law, to get him unnerved before a debate because it worked." Wilson would approach Cook before a debate and say: 'How's Shari, have you heard from Shari lately Merrill?' And he would just . . . come unglued."

Cook said he remembers Wilson at the debates, but doesn't recall her ever mentioning Holweg. Cook said he certainly wasn't bothered by Wilson or anything she may have said.

Anderson didn't know about her actions, Wilson said. Anderson said he didn't know what Wilson was doing -- taunting Cook -- and in fact condemns such practices. "I think that is extremely inappropriate and I'm sorry that anyone affiliated with my campaign would have done anything like that," Anderson said.

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