History might one day dictate that Aug. 31, 2006, was the day the long-held dream of a natural gas pipeline stretching more than 1,700 miles from the resource rich North Slope of Alaska south to America died forever. History is already clear that on that day the political landscape of Alaska shook with a tremor of Good Friday earthquake proportions.

Drive east and south along the Seward Highway from Anchorage, the state's largest city, toward the Kenai Peninsula even today, and you can still see the legacy of the 1964 geologic convulsion in the black hulks of the dead trees standing along Turnagain Arm.

Lands along the Arm dropped below the level of the tides after the '64 quake. When the saltwaters of Cook Inlet came rushing back, the trees were flooded. Their roots sucked saltwater up into their trunks, and they were preserved seemingly forever, although eventually they will topple and be visible no more; one given in life is that the world, and its history, is always changing.

And there are always cataclysmic events. Aug. 31, 2006 marked the beginning, though far from the end, of one such event.

That was the day the Federal Bureau of Investigation stormed into legislative offices across the state. Agents, backed by lawyers from the U.S. Justice Department, were looking to take down a cadre of legislators who'd self-proclaimed themselves, only half-jokingly it would later turn out, "The Corrupt Bastards Club.''

The intentions of investigators were, at the time, painted in the noblest of terms.“Thanks FBI” bumper stickers began to appear on fenders all across the state. An innocent observer might have fairly thought Elliott Ness had arrived to take down some northern version of Al Capone.

Only later would people begin to wonder if maybe there wasn't more to it than that. When Ted Stevens, one of the most powerful men in the U.S. Senate, was convicted of corruption only to have his high-paid lawyers uncover the lies and deceit of the prosecutors who convicted him, Alaskans wondered maybe the whole affair wasn't as much about people trying to catch a big fish and make their careers as it was about justice.

Whatever it was about, whatever the intentions of the players, there is no doubt the FBI probe and what followed set off a chain-reaction of events of epic proportions.

The most powerful politician in state history was toppled from his position; the stage was set for a newly elected governor and little-known mayor from the small hamlet of Wasilla to launch onto the national political stage in a way rarely seen in American politics. One of the biggest companies ever founded in the 49th state died. A backlash against Big Oil led to a tax that pumped state coffers full with new oil money. And the proposed natural gas pipeline -- one of the great dreams of Alaskans for decades -- was perhaps doomed forever.

Everyone walks away

It all stems from what Alaska's U.S. Attorney Karen Loeffler on Friday called a "victory” in the “largest and most successful corruption case in Alaska history.”

Her words came after the cases of former state Reps. Pete Kott and Vic Kohring ended. Both men had been in prison when evidence of misconduct in the prosecution of former Sen. Ted Stevens exposed dirty dealings by some in the Justice Department. Kott and Korhing were subsequently freed from jail pending new trials. Both former lawmakers eventually agreed to plead guilty to bribery charges to escape any possibility of going back to jail. What they got in exchange for those pleas were sentences equal to the time they'd already served.