INVESTIGATORS armed with subpoe nas have seized the office computer of Laura Demichele, a state Power Authority travel officer and longtime friend of the agency’s suspended inspector general, Daniel Wiese, sources said.
The seizure, at the authority’s headquarters in White Plains by probers for Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, raised eyebrows last week throughout the agency, where Demichele serves as the $85,727-a-year “travel administrator.”
An authority source described Demichele, a one-time travel agent recruited to her post by Wiese, as “very angry” when she realized on returning from a Florida vacation that her computer had “disappeared.”
“She was very angry and stayed in her office for the day, with the door closed, and spoke to no one,” the source said.
Senior authority officials were described as “abuzz over what may be on Laurie’s computer.”
“She knew everything Danny was doing, and she was the one responsible for arranging for [former Gov. George] Pataki’s use of the authority’s planes for his travel, and the travel of everyone else of importance,” a well-placed source noted.
Pataki, who secretly arranged for the state to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for his travel on corporate-type jets, also regularly traveled on authority aircraft to avoid the press scrutiny that followed his use of the state’s regular VIP aircraft fleet, operated by the State Police.
The Post disclosed last week that Cuomo was probing allegations that Wiese, a one-time top State Police official, used a Power Authority security contract to dig up dirt on the political foes of former Govs. Eliot Spitzer and Pataki.
Hundreds, and possibly thousands, of individuals were investigated under the contract, and Cuomo’s probers are seeking to determine whether every investigation was part of legitimate Power Authority business, sources said.
Neither Wiese nor Demichele could be reached.
Authority spokeswoman Christine Pritchard refused to comment.
Cuomo’s sweeping criminal probe of the State Police is being conducted at Gov. Paterson’s request in the wake of the Dirty Tricks Scandal and claims by state lawmakers that they were targeted for State Police surveillance.