RAPID CITY - Looking back with 3-1/2 years of pained perspective, John Cooper admits he was wrong to hunt elk with a nonresident friend given special resident hunting privileges by former Gov. Bill Janklow.

But Cooper also acknowledges that it was tough to say "no" to Janklow, especially on legal points where the former governor believed he was right.

"How the hell would I handle that? Go to the governor and say, 'Uh, we're going to do a little check and get a second opinion?'" Cooper said. "Bill believed he had the legal authority to do that. And on that, he was the expert, not me."

Even so, the former secretary of the South Dakota Game, Fish & Parks Department said during a two-hour interview last week that he shouldn't have acquiesced when Janklow granted resident hunting rights to Washington, D.C.- area resident Eric Washburn.

Washburn, who worked for 10 years as an aide to former Sen. Tom Daschle, D-S.D., joined Cooper for an October 2003 elk hunt near Pringle in a season reserved for state residents.

Legal or not, the hunt and Washburn's special privileges were mistakes, Cooper said.

"It was wrong," he said. "It was a wrong deal, and I got Eric in trouble and certainly didn't help myself personally or professionally with my law-enforcement people, who are some of the people in that (GF&P) department that I value the most."

The saga began on Oct. 13, 2003, when Cooper and Washburn each shot an antlerless elk on U.S. Forest Service ground near Pringle, in the southern Black Hills. The next day, they took the animals to a Rapid City meat-processor. They also stopped at Scheels Sports to buy a $100 gift certificate for Phil Lampert, a former concession operator at Custer State Park who allowed Cooper and Washburn to camp on his property and use a trailer to haul the elk carcasses.

After a tip from a Scheels employee, state GF&P law-enforcement personnel began an investigation into the hunt that was handed over to U.S. Fish and Wildlife agent Bob Prieksat of Pierre. A few weeks later, the U.S. attorney's office in South Dakota decided not to file charges.

But the investigation and the explosive publicity it produced began to dismantle a 20-plus-year personal and professional relationship between Prieksat and Cooper, himself a former federal game warden. It also led Prieksat and some GF&P officers to suspect that Cooper was involved in the current campaign by Gov. Mike Rounds to oust Prieksat and threaten the end of cooperative law-enforcement agreements between state and federal wildlife agents.

Cooper had declined comment on the issue since his retirement as GF&P secretary in January. But he agreed to speak to the Journal after a recent story based on FWS records saying he threatened action against Prieksat and the FWS. While admitting other mistakes, Cooper adamantly denied that he orchestrated any kind of payback.

"I didn't understand, and I'm still (upset) about the way this (2003) investigation was handled by Bob Prieksat on me personally," Cooper said. "But it did not affect the department's working relationship with Bob. I made sure of that. I swore I wouldn't let that happen, and I didn't."

Apparently, that was true at least through Cooper's retirement. But about a month later, Rounds' Chief of Staff Rob Skjonsberg ordered GF&P officers to stop working with Prieksat, except in special cases approved by new GF&P head Jeff Vonk. Skjonsberg also demanded that FWS supervisors fire or reassign Prieksat to another state.

And later Skjonsberg threatened to revoke memorandums of agreement (MOAs) authorizing state and federal wildlife agents to cooperate on law- enforcement cases.

That resembled the payback Cooper seemed to threaten during a Nov. 3, 2003, interview in a Rapid City motel with agent Neal Hartman of the regional FWS office in Lakewood, Colo.

According to Hartman's written summary, obtained by the Journal through the Freedom of Information Act, Cooper angrily castigated Prieksat for poor judgment and lack of discretion that was rubbing off on GF&P officers.

Cooper also said he was angry at Prieksat and some of his own officers for investigating him in the elk case without his knowledge and was "going to take some action," the report said.

Hartman said in the report that he cautioned Cooper against making "major policy decisions" that might jeopardize the working relationship between GF&P and the FWS. Hartman then quoted Cooper as saying, "There is not going to be any relationship with (Prieksat) either personally or professionally."

After reading that portion of the report for the first time last week, Cooper said Hartman didn't include a key preface to that quote in which Cooper clarified that he was speaking for himself, not GF&P.

"I told Neal that for me, John Cooper, I'm going to sever all ties personally with Bob Prieksat, and professionally with Bob Prieksat," Cooper said. "What's missing in the report is that I said, 'Please don't interpret this to mean that somehow, some way, the working relationship between South Dakota Game, Fish & Parks and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is going to go away or be affected.'"

Cooper said he felt betrayed by Prieksat and his own officers because they didn't give him a chance to explain that Washburn had a decree from Janklow allowing him to hunt as a resident. Cooper said Prieksat refused to return calls from him requesting a meeting. Prieksat also refused to return elk meat belonging to Cooper and Washburn that he had confiscated from a Rapid City processor.

Prieksat has said since then that he typically doesn't call people to tell them they are being investigated, regardless of who they are.

Cooper admits now that his anger caused him to overreact in a telephone call with GF&P officers MIke Kintigh and Bruce Nachtigall of Rapid City during the investigation.

"I blew my stack and said some things I shouldn't have said," Cooper said.

Cooper said he was particularly angry when it became clear to him that his officers had not called him about the investigation because Prieksat instructed them not to.

"I said to them, and I'm going to clean this up: 'Screw Bob Prieksat. When it comes to the work we do, you work for this department. You work for the state. You work for the governor, just like I do.' That was a hot conversation, a hot telephone call," Cooper said.

But Cooper said he eventually cooled off and sent word out to his four regional offices that the working relationship between GF&P and Prieksat would not be affected. Cooper said he told Emmett Keyser, a GF&P official who overseas covert law-enforcement operations between federal and state agents, to make sure that was clear to the field staff.

"I told Emmett, 'Tell your people there won't be any kind of an issue, no retribution, no issues with the MOAs, because I think they're important,'" Cooper said. "I didn't want any kind of a problem with those."

Rounds and Skjonsberg both say that Cooper never asked them to take action against Prieksat or the Fish and Wildlife Service. In a related issue, they also deny being motivated by the fact that Prieksat was conducting an investigation that included Rounds' brother, Tom, a week or so before Skjonsberg went public with his demand that Prieksat be removed. Tom Rounds was not charged in that case.

As he typically does on this issue, Prieksat declined a chance to comment on Cooper's statements. So did FWS regional law-enforcement supervisor Gary Mowad of Lakewood, Colo. Neal Hartman has retired from the FWS service but was regarded by his colleagues as a detailed and accurate investigator.

Cooper was an accomplished investigator himself during 22 years in FWS law enforcement that preceded his appointment as GF&P secretary by Janklow in 1995. During his FWS career, Cooper mentored and worked with Prieksat.

When the story broke in the Journal about the elk-hunt story more than 3-1/2 years ago, Cooper maintained that Washburn was hunting legally because of the Janklow decree, which had been filed with the South Dakota secretary of state. Subsequently, however, South Dakota Attorney General Larry Long said he believed the decree was invalid. And Gov. Mike Rounds rescinded it.

Janklow argued that he had the authority to grant the decree, a question that was never clearly answered. Janklow surprised Washburn with the framed residency decree during a meeting at the governor's residence in 1998.

Janklow was especially fond of Washburn, who worked for Daschle in the Senate from 1993 to January of 2003 and was instrumental in winning congressional approval for a bill on Missouri River resources that Daschle crafted with Janklow and Cooper.

Janklow knew that Washburn had fallen in love with South Dakota, wanted to learn to hunt and fish and had once whimsically said - when Janklow asked how he could repay his work for South Dakota - that he'd love to have resident hunting and fishing privileges.

Janklow signed a decree that he believed fulfilled Washburn's dream.

"Janklow absolutely sincerely wanted to thank Washburn," Cooper said. "But I should have said to Eric, 'You know, he (Janklow) meant everything he said tonight, but we can't get this done, buddy.'"

Rather than challenge Janklow directly, Cooper said, he could have advised Washburn to simply not take advantage of the decree. Instead, he hunted and fished with Washburn as a resident a number of times before the elk hunt.

"I should have told him to take that proclamation and put it up on the wall and think about how much he meant to the governor of this state," Cooper said. "I should had told him, 'Do that, but if you come up here to fish and hunt, you should buy a nonresident license.' That's the way I should have handled it."

Cooper notified officials in the GF&P licensing office but few others in the department about the decree. He had Washburn's license sent to his home in Pierre, apparently in violation of the law requiring license applications to include the applicant's regular place of residence.

That was all part of the investigation, which Prieksat took on through authority of the Lacey Act. The act gives FWS agents standing in cases that involve the transport or intent to transport illegally taken wildlife across state lines.

Federal prosecutors ultimately decided against charges, largely because the Janklow decree muddied the legal question.

Washburn agreed to donate his elk meat and any commingled with Cooper's during processing to a hunters' organization providing wild game to low-income families.

Cooper kept the rest of his meat but admits that its sweet flavor sometimes brings biting memories.

"It was a beautiful place. We hunted hard and had a good time," Cooper said. "But it's a tough memory now. It's been a bitter, tough deal."

Contact Kevin Woster at 394-8413 or kevin.woster@rapidcityjournal.com