Bill Killian Stinks It Up Again

No offense to Bill Killian, admin for easternband.com, but he brought up an old odor again through this posting. Then again, sometimes you have to pump out the septic tank to make it work properly, so I should thank him, especially since it keeps drawing attention to the issue of press freedom.
In 2005, the same year my sister-in-law, who's a critic of Chief Michell Hicks, ran for Council in opposition to Angie Kephart, Bill Killian paid for an advertisement to run in the One Feather urging tribal voters to vote for candidates who would oppose Michell Hicks' agenda. The ad was no different from the type of advertising run by former Congressman Charles Taylor. Sure it could be classified as mudslinging, but it's politics. That's what happens. Besides I'm always in favor of furthering political debate.
I wasn't terribly surprised to get a letter from our thin-skinned chief. I was surprised at the defamation of character accusation. When I was asked by Killian if I caught any crap over his ad, I told him the chief accused me of libel. He soon afterward posted about the chief's accusation on his site. Then all hell broke lose.
I got called into Mary Jane Ferguson's office and harshly lectured about what's appropriate to put in the paper. Michell Hicks had a temper tantrum in front of Council, even conveying a veiled threat against my job. I was written up for disclosing confidential information, which consisted of me mentioning a few words to Killian about the chief's unpublished letter, which was scheduled for publication in the next edition. What happened after that was then Attorney General David Nash submitted nearly the same letter as his own. The only difference was the chief's defamation accusation was deleted.
I'm glad to finally have the opportunity to get that out in the open, because the chief's interpretation of personnel policy on confidentiality would've been used against me. It also provides an insider's insight to what lengths the Hicks administration will go to mislead the public. It turns out that the chief would create another interpretation of the personnel policy to use as an excuse to remove me from the One Feather. Freedom of the press appears to be an ongoing issue, and Chief Hicks still seems willing to go to great lengths to keep the truth from the public and to squelch dissent.