ALBANY – Daniel Wiese was a little-known, $50,000-a-year State Police investigator in October 1994 with strong ties to an unknown freshman senator from Peekskill, George Pataki, and an even less politically established Manhattan lawyer by the name of Eliot Spitzer.
A month and a half later, State Police Major Wiese was making $66,000 a year as head of Gov.-elect Pataki’s security detail – and on his way to a controversial career as a behind-the-scenes power player in the Division of State Police as a confidant and operative for two governors.
Over the next 14 years, Wiese, 55, played key roles in the Pataki and Spitzer administrations.
He retired from the State Police in 2003 at $120,000 a year and currently pulls in more than $225,000 annually in salary and pension in a cushy patronage job as the state Power Authority’s inspector general.
Now he also will be scrutinized by Attorney General Andrew Cuomo as part of an extraordinary investigation authorized by Gov. Paterson last week.
Over the years, Wiese was a frequent visitor to Pataki’s palatial home in Garrison, Putnam County, where he owned a house nearby.
Wiese was close friends with, and often at the side of, Zenia Mucha, Pataki’s controversial first communications director, who often acted more like the governor – giving orders to top state officials – rather than as a spokeswoman for one.
The Village Voice raised eyebrows in 2004 when it reported that he invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination when questioned by a federal grand jury about the alleged sale of paroles by Pataki administration officials.
Pataki refused to discuss Wiese or the report.
Wiese also served as a secret political link between Pataki and Spitzer, with whom he worked while assigned to the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office in the 1980s.
He was an occasional visitor to Spitzer’s Columbia County farm and, when needed, was assigned to play important roles in Spitzer administration activities.
“Danny Wiese literally became in charge of the New York City element of the State Police,” said a former official who worked closely with Wiese.
Attempts to reach Wiese for comment were unsuccessful.
Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno (R-Rensselaer) said last week that it was “almost common knowledge among insiders that Danny Wiese was running the State Police under Pataki and [continued to run it] until recently, and it’s disgraceful.”
Bruno, the target of last summer’s Dirty Tricks Scandal in which Spitzer and several top aides used the State Police in a plot against him, said he believes that Wiese was directly involved, insisting, “Danny Wiese, he was coordinating things.”
Wiese claimed late last summer that he wasn’t involved in the anti-Bruno efforts.
But a Friday report from Albany District Attorney David Soares revealed that Wiese had, at the request of Spitzer’s communications director, Christine Anderson, given a secret briefing to The New York Times designed to justify the State Police’s surveillance of Bruno.